Anything for Life
by LesserWraith
Summary: Toothless is fatally injured, and Hiccup is willing to trade anything to save his life. A collaboration between me and Absi B!
1. Prologue

**Welcome to my very first collaboration story ever! I and Absi B will take turns posting chapters, to which you can identify from the start of every chapter. The artwork is by Absi B, and I have my eternal thanks for her for finally letting me use (someone's) original artwork for my story.**

**Enjoy! This is LesserWraith's chapter.**

* * *

Toothless is the best friend I've ever had.

He's been with me through the days dark and light, sad and happy, boring and fun.

I've never really admitted it, but I'd do anything to just make sure he's happy in life.

He's made mine one of the best, after all.

So you might be a little surprised that he's not by my side now. Well, I _did_ say days. I didn't mean minutes. If he was next to me _all_ the time, including when I was doing my more personal things… _that_ would be awkward. You can get close, but you can never get _too_ close, no? Otherwise, you'd just push each other away with all that awkwardness.

Needless to say, he's making our bond stronger by leaving me alone for a while.

He's out in the forest, doing this that dragons would normally do when they're curious of something: explore. He told me that he'd bring me something back, but hey, I'm not counting on much. Last time he went into the place to explore like this, I got a rock.

So I'm just standing here, by back to a log in the dense forestation, where my two feet cannot betray me, drawing a picture of you-know-who.

I've drawn so many pictures of Toothless before. Back in the days when we weren't friends yet, I examined him from a distance as he lived in the cove and tried to find a way out. It was one of my first pictures that motivated me to change the missing tailfin on both Toothless and the picture. After that, I studied his flying positions and how he ran, jumped, and slept. I'm not sure if Toothless even knows that I sketch him when he's eating.

I'm kinda crazy about that dragon. It's not often that you find a friendship stronger than love, even though you're only friends. I doubt that Astrid would care for me half of what Toothless does. She obviously likes to _hurt_ me too, which is something Toothless has never done (on purpose).

I finish a sketch of him in the air, breathing fire into the air, and quickly turn the page. It's kind of cool that I know Toothless so well that I can draw him from memory, but I still like the real deal better. The real guy purrs and snorts and warbles when he's stationary, and likes to look up to the sky a lot. The real guy runs around me and chases his tail just for the fun of it.

I begin drawing a picture of Toothless on the ground, his paws scratching at the dirt, digging for something below. To people, it would just look like any ordinary patch of land, but to dragons, there's usually something below the ordinary. And, more than often, there is.

I listen to the birds as they sing their songs from above. What are they trying to say, really? Their melodic chirps and happy caws could be killing insults for all we know. Toothless likes to point out that they're just trying to communicate to each other, but _what_ are they saying?

I wonder if birds have the same opinions and our nonsense talking as well.

Toothless is a creature full of inner flame. His conscience can make the impossible possible. However, it can only be triggered by a very emotional event that sets off his flames. After our first test flight, his inner flame granted him the ability to speak to me from his mind. A day after Toothless saw the new prosthetic, the result of the fight with the Red Death, he tore off the prosthetic and healed my leg. He fainted after that from the excessive use of inner flame, but he said that it was 'worth it'.

What he never decided to heal, though, was his tailfin. Every time I asked why, he'd say the same thing. He would rather be on the ground with me than in the sky alone. I told him, of course, that he could still be by my side with a healed tailfin anyway, but he shook his head and said that he 'liked the way _I_ controlled a part of him whenever we flew.' I rolled my eyes after that, but his point remained the same. He wasn't getting healing himself anytime soon.

After a few finishing touches, I turn to the last page of the notebook. I have about five filled notebooks now, and this will go to its collection once it's done.

An ending picture has the most powerful impact on people, especially when there are no words to accompany it.

So I begin to draw again.

Toothless is flying in the air with me in this picture. His eyes are slit in determination, his wings outstretched as we shoot through rings upon rings of rocks that pose no challenge to us at all. My head is held low to protect myself from the wind that comes with the supersonic speed that Toothless creates with his powerful wings, white lines forming at the edge of his wings as he slowly and slowly accelerates into the speeds uncharted for.

He's the fastest dragon on Berk.

He's the best dragon in the world.

Has anyone ever thought how far we've come? Just a few months ago, we were mortal enemies, sworn on killing and taking revenging on the other, and with the strangest and strongest events ever, we went from archenemies to friend to best friend to _super_ best friend.

Hey, not even Stormfly and Astrid are this close. Will they ever be?

The birds fall silent for a second. It's like they're sending out some kind of warning.

"What-" I begin, but I never finish the sentence, for a ripping screech fills my ears the second I open my mouth.

A ripping screech that sounds horribly familiar. A _dragon__'__s_ screech. Of pain.

"_Toothless__!_" I yell, taking off towards the source of the noise.

I run through the trees as fast as I can, trying to ignore the increasing pain coming from my heart. I always feel as hurt as he is, and possibly more. My mind is focused to only one thing, and that's Toothless's scream.

What happened?

Is he hurt? Is he in trouble?

I'll never forgive myself if that happens. He's… no way.

I spot Toothless in a clearing not far away, his body slumped on the ground, motionless.

"Toothless!" I yell, running towards him He doesn't answer.

"Oh, Toothless… no..." I say, inspecting his wounds and touching his snout to know that I'm here.

His leg bleeding badly with red, warm blood, one of his wings ripped in a horribly misshapen way, his prosthetic lying a few meters away from him, utterly destroyed and useless. I can tell, by the way he's slumped like that, that there's a huge wound in his belly as well.

"Toothless!" I say, looking around for something to stop his bleedings. Apart from my clothes, there's nothing else that looks like it'll be able to hold those cuts together.

_Hiccup__?_ Toothless asks, opening one of his eyes weakly. He lets out another painful scream as the blood continues to flow out of him from several locations.

"Toothless! Stay with me!" I say, looking at him with affixed determination. "What the hell happened here?!"

Toothless looks at me sadly. _I __was __digging __and __I __accidentally __set __off __a __trap __that __was __buried __underneath__. __I__'__m __sorry__, __Hiccup__._

My eyes widen in shock. I'm already taking off my shirt and wiping the blood from his leg. It soaks up in no time, and seeps right through the fibre as if it was air. This is not going to hold.

_Stop __it__. __I __know __when __I__'__m __a __goner__, __Hiccup__. __I __can__'__t __even __move __my tail __anymore__._

"No!" I say, casting my shirt aside and pressing my boots against his wound. It's no use. He's losing too much blood, and too fast. If he's lucky, he'll get at least another ten minutes before he gets no more.

_Hiccup__, __go__. __I __don__'__t __want __you __to __see __me __die__._

"NO!" I yell, turning my head frantically in search of anything that will soothe his pain. "You're not going to die! You're not going to leave me alone!"

Another scream from him as his wing's wounds open up, blood coating his entire wing in seconds.

_I__'__m __sorry __I __can__'__t __be __there __for __you__. __I __swore __to __protect __you __all __your __life__, __and__… __I__'__m __sorry__._

"You. Are. Not. DYING!" I scream right back, grabbing a huge leaf and madly trying to scrape the blood away. The more I do, though, the more floods right out. I rub my head in frustration and anger.

_Hiccup__, _he says. _I __only __have __enough __internal __flame __for __one __more __wish__. __I __want __you __to __use __it __wisely__. __It __will __probably __destroy __any __memory __that __I __have __left __of __you__, __but __I__'__m __going __to __die __anyway__. Best that you get it._

"NO!"

His eyelids begin to fade. He's close.

No.

No.

No.

Toothless is NOT going to die!

A vivid idea pops into my mind at the last second, my mind racing to find reason, but there is none in the mixture of confusion and fear that consumes my mind, forcing me to do one final thing that I'll never, ever, forget.

"Toothless. I've got my wish," I say quickly. With extreme pain, he manages to smile.

_What__.. __is __it__?_ he says quietly. His voice is fading already, but he manages to open his mouth and let a blue fire hover out, his dying wish and final memory of me now in front of me.

I look at it, and speak to it as softly as I would with Toothless.

"I want you to live."

Both of Toothless's eyes open wide at these words, the flame beginning to engulf his body with this 'final' wish of his.

He will be healed, but he will not know me.

_No__!_ he yells angrily. The fire continues to spread. _I __can__'__t __live __not __knowing __you __anymore__!_

"You're going to lose all memory of me, anyway," I say grimly. "What's the point?"

He roars as the flame takes more than half of his body over, the miracles to happen as soon as the fire covers all of him.

_I__'__ll __become __a __rogue __dragon __again__! _he yells, the flame taking more and more of his body. _I __might __even __kill __you __on __sight__!_

"I know, Toothless," I say, tears beginning to fall from my eyes. "That's why you're not going to see me around anymore."

_But__- __but__- _ his voice is close to cracking.

The flames are nearly done completing their job.

"You'll be free again, Toothless. You'll get to live in the sky, eat as much fish as you want, have fun with new dragons and maybe even find a mate," I say, forcing myself to stay together. "You're going to live your life to the fullest."

_I-_ he says, speechless.

"This is my wish, Toothless. With or without me, you will live."

_Hiccup__-_ he begins. I touch his snout once, and he falls silent, his eyes mixed between gratitude and anger. The flames finally take over him, forcing his eyes to close and forget me forever.

I face the best friend in the world one last time.

"I'll miss you, Toothless," I whisper.

I turn around and run as fast as I can, not wanting to be seen when the new Toothless opens his eyes to the world.

To the world without me.

**T**

Toothless's wounds heal incredibly fast under this Night Fury coma. The blood from his wings disappear and are replaced with new, strong scales. His leg's skin is patched up quickly as the new scales form from the scales nearby, climbing up steadily and filling up the once gaping hole that once was overflowing with blood. The tailfin that was once lost from my shooting slowly regrows, new muscles working their up into the air where the tailfin should be, to where the tailfin should be. When the flames die down, he looks like a true Night Fury.

He looks just like Toothless.

And I hope that he will find me again someday, for no other dragon will ever be as great of a friend as him.

Ever.

* * *

**L/N: The next chapter will belong to Absi B! I feel so happy being able to collaborate and all.**


	2. Disappearances

**Welcome to Absi B's chapter! Make sure you let us know about how you feel!**

* * *

**H**

I watch as my former best friend roars and shoots blue flames toward the skies. I sit helplessly as he takes flight, and the image of him flying away is imprinted in my memory for ever. I sit for a few more moments, wishing it could have been different. I wanted Toothless back more than I wanted food on the table at night.

More than I wanted a warm fire to sleep by. More than I wanted oxygen to breathe. He turned my life around when I thought it would only get worse. And now, I can't do anything to make him happy. We saved each other from lonely, miserable lives. Being together made us complete again.

**T**

I wake up, and the first thing I see is a blue sky and wooden houses. I roar and shoot flames, establishing my dominance over the puny humans. With a beat of my powerful wings, I am airborne. I have always loved flying. In my opinion, it's one of the best things about being a dragon. The power of flight gives you innumerable advantages- you can look for prey, you can launch airborne attacks, or you can just enjoy the world from a different vantage point. I fly towards the only place I can call home- the nest. I shriek with joy as I twirl and dodge through the clouds, pretending I am dancing. When I near the island I call out for my fellow dragons, but nobody answers. I touch down with a bound, but the only living creature on the island is me. Where have the others gone? I can't be the last dragon, surely?

**H**

I wake up to the sound of horns. Not my usual wake- up call, I'll admit. Then, I remember the events from yesterday. My usual wake- up call isn't there anymore. I look at the empty pedestal opposite my bed, tears threatening to break free from my eyes. There is so much here that reminds me of Toothless. The horns blare again, and I try to push those thoughts to the back of my mind and concentrate on the new dawn.

**T**

Inside what is left of the volcano, I see destruction and desolation all around me. Ash is piled everywhere, and bones of dragons are littered on every platform and inside every crevice. I call out once more, hoping to find life in this dead place. There is none. I shoot blue flames into the sky, trying to alert any living dragon. Nothing comes to my aid. I am all alone in this place. I warm the rocks beneath my feet, curl up, and let my thoughts overwhelm me.

Some time later, when my usually random thoughts and feelings are ordered in my mind like a phalanx of soldiers, I am ready. I flap my wings and launch myself skyward. The cool night air allows me to become almost invisible to any human. That's how I earned the name they gave me. I have never been caught, and never missed my target. I try one last time to call more of my kind to this place. I try the call of a Nadder, a Nightmare, and a Gronckle, even though, deep inside, I know I am destined to be alone in this dark place.

I am not afraid of the dark- it is my ally, the one part of the day when I rule the skies without exception; it is the being alone that I fear. Even though I have been (to the best of my knowledge) the last Night Fury for decades now, I have always been surrounded by creatures that are as close to family as I'll ever get. I soar higher and higher, bursting through the clouds to come face to face with a giant white orb. It lights up the sky, showing me the way. I follow its beams of light until my wings grow weary, and I dive back through the clouds to look for somewhere to stop.

I am in luck. In front of me lies an archipelago. I glide lower, adjusting my path so that I will land in a clearing on the largest island. The islands are green- the colour of jade. As I fly lower, I hear the cries of exotic birds, and the frolicking of sea creatures in the choppy waters. The trees that grow there are tall and lush, and many of them are laden with colourful fruit. As my feet touch the long grass of the clearing for the first time, I tuck my wings together and lay down, rolling in the grass for what seems like hours. When I am done luxuriating in the cool grass and stiff breeze, I scorch a small patch of ground and settle down to rest. I may not have found more of my kind yet, but at least I had escaped the all-pervading smell of death that encircled what had been the nest.

**H**

As I open the door to my house on the top of the hill to watch the sunrise, I am greeted by the sight of villagers playing with their dragons. I see Astrid feeding Stormfly some fish and scratching her neck- something Toothless loved. I see the twins confusing their dragon, then apologising and feeding it dragon nip. Nothing calmed Toothless down more effectively than some softly spoken words and some dragon nip.

Suddenly, my emotions overwhelm me, and I sprint towards the Cove. On the way there I notice all the signs that point to our previous life. Our friendship. Or, the beginning of it, at least. I see the tree Toothless crashed into after I shot him down. Even the remains of the bola I used is still on the floor. I sit where he had lain, thinking about how that one decision changed our lives for ever. I hold the rope and stone in my hands, thinking that this length of rope intertwined our fates for ever.

When a cool breeze touches my face, I know it is time to keep moving. I make my way to the Cove, where I find the scales Toothless shed when he was first trying to escape. I collect them all up, and make a neat pile in the corner of the clearing. I walk over to the rock I sat on, where the small rough drawing of Toothless is still engraved in the dirt. I sit down with my head in my hands, and let the tears fall to the floor.


	3. Unrequited

**This is LesserWraith's chapter. Hope you enjoy it!**

* * *

**T**

The night is like the day for some creatures. It's the time where they thrive and live, eat and hunt, woo and mate. It's that kind of time for those who despise sunlight, those who just want to stay solitary and alone in the dark.

Just like me.

Among these wild birds and colorful lights that light up the world at night, I want nothing more than to just get up and fly into the sky. Dragons don't like a lot of sleep, but they don't like staying around for too long either. We are creatures of majesty, each of us serving a specific role in the spherical land and water that allows us to live, but we are of course not united. Some prefer the day. Some prefer the night. But we all do our role.

My role is to make sure the night dragons aren't getting out of control. They often do, and it's more than annoying at points. Most of them will simply bow down to the Night Fury, but more or less some will refuse to cooperate until they are dosed with a good amount of fire. There was once even this Whispering Death, who hates the sunlight, that I once scorched for ruining the mating grounds of another species, and he was _mad_. He never quite let up on trying to take revenge on me.

I still don't quite know if I've killed him yet or not. There is just a huge gap in my brain that I cannot remember anything at all. I can only believe my whiteout had come from those giant ropes of death earlier that knocked me out for so long. Dragons don't die unless they lose all their regeneration power, so I was probably in stasis until then. When I woke up, I remembered nothing… except for a feeling of care.

I don't know what this feeling is. What is care? The affection that one has for another? When I was in the nest, I sure was the leader there at night, watching the day dragons sleep and the night dragons awaken. And I had a few friends, namely a Changewing that roams with me at night. But do dragons _care_ for each other? I don't know.

My solitary is quite a pain to me sometimes. If dragons don't have caring emotions, then what is this little spark inside me that makes me watch where I step in fear of killing anything, the little twinge of guilt whenever I eat a fish, the feeling that someone needs me, despite none ever having to?

I don't know. And, as a Night Fury, I'm ashamed by this.

I trudge slowly through the forest, not really knowing what I'm supposed to find or where to go. I see no dragons in the vicinity, only birds and strange plants that are new to me. I don't think any of these need to be regulated at night- they just mind their own businesses, and with that I'm fine. It's hard enough to hurt a dragon, let alone a smaller creature, now that I care about them. The only time that I really want to use force now is to establish dominance, as a Night Fury, as the ruler of the twilight- and I did just that a few hours ago.

Now, with nothing to establish dominance _to,_ I am lost. I have nothing, just I feel like I used to have them.

Of course. That Changewing. He must be the one who showed me all this care.

I must find him. He wasn't at the nest, but I saw nothing that looked like him in the rubbled remains. He must be in hiding, or otherwise lost like me.

I shall go and ask him what this care means, and why a powerful dragon like me would have it.

**H**

It's been one day, one night, and another 4 hours since Toothless left. Yes, I've been staring at the sundial all day, just counting the number of hours that have passed after his departure. I don't know what else to do now. I have no want to draw, I have no want to talk- I don't even want to eat anymore. I just want to stay here, look at the sundial, think of every minute that I no longer have Toothless by my side, and ask myself what I am without him.

We were always one- we even got the chance to talk to each other, as equals. He was never a pet to me, regardless of what other people thought. He was a friend. And when the chain of thoughts and emotions finally broke through that day, I finally knew that he truly saw too more than just a rider. I asked him if what he wanted was to truly be by my side, all the time, without any thoughts of leaving, and he said _yes._ I asked him if he was fine with other people calling him a pet, and he said he _yes._ He just wanted to be next to me. Even I ask myself sometimes what I did to deserve such a faithful friend.

All those days before, he'd laugh, joke, or even just hug me and tell me how much I meant to him, as a friend, as one who broke through his emotional barrier and let him experience joy. He'd tell me of the days that he was flying alone, and how none of it truly mattered any more with me by his side, just making him feel safe and happy.

I've never really told him how much _he_ meant to me. All I was to him was a sarcastic and lovesick boy, and he was all about protecting me, even if he could clearly be somewhere else. I never told him how much I appreciated his warm scales on cold nights, his careful heart when I was heartbroken. In other words, I treated him like a pet.

I wish he was here. I wish I could make it alright again.

But I can't.

All I can do is sit down and watch the time pass without him.

And without him knowing what I'm going through.

* * *

**Sorry for the really short chapter- I swear, as soon as I can find a plot to cling on, I will jump to it as fast as I can. In the meanwhile, wait for Searching for Lightning- which will take a while due to my lovely life problems. Seeya!**


	4. Memoirs

**Welcome back! This is Absi B's chapter. As usual, tell us what you dis/like!**

* * *

**H**

I gave up staring at the sundial after two days, two nights and six hours. I've moved onto staring at Toothless. At least, the pictures of him that I've drawn. They're the only things left to remind me every day what colour his eyes are, or what he looks like when he's happy.

I don't know if I'll ever see a real contented Toothless again. I collected the scales and bola from the woods, and now they take pride of place on my desk. I don't know why I prize them so much. Both of them show the pain and suffering I caused him.

Maybe I keep them to remind myself of what could have been. I could have killed him when I found him in the woods.

I think back to that day, my knife raised above his heart, and I hear my voice saying something about cutting out his heart and taking it to my father. Until recently, being lenient that day was one of the best things I've decided to do in my short life.

Until recently, I thought that Toothless and I could be together forever.

I will do anything for him, as he has done everything for me. He has taken me up from being a village mistake that everybody laughed at, to being somebody to be respected, and liked. He has shown me what true friendship can be like, and how selfless others can be.

Now, I have to live my life alone, when I know what true happiness feels like. But now, it's unobtainable. I think of Toothless, doing everything for me. I think of him now, his mind completely wiped of his memories of me. I know that I would rather see Toothless flying around, living the life he was meant to, than dead on the floor. I had to make that choice two days ago. No matter the state of his memories, our hearts are intrinsically linked.

If he died, it would feel like I died too. There would be nothing left to live for.

With him alive, albeit clueless, I still have something to live for. I still have something that I can make right in this world.

And so, I will go to the ends of the earth to find my friend again.

Because what did I ever do for him? I shot him down and rendered him unable to fly. Yes, I may have made him a new tail, but he wouldn't have needed it without me.

I always listened while he did the talking. I never spoke up once about my feelings for him.

I want to make sure that the first thing he knows if he ever makes it back to Berk is how I feel about him.

I don't care if he never remembers me again; I want him to know how I loved him, even if he no longer loves me.

So, I write. I pick up my pencil and start writing in my journal. I pour out all my thoughts and feelings that should have been said long ago. It takes many hours for me to find the right words, since so few can describe what an incredible friend he was to me.

When I am done, I find I have filled a whole notebook with my thoughts. I close it gently, respectfully, and inscribe his name on the book's cover. This is his book now. When he gets back, I will read it to him. I will read it every night to let him know that he is loved. Right now, all I know is that he will never get to remember how he is loved and respected. Unless I can get him back.

I don't want to ever be alone again.

**T**

I have been flying for many hours. I call for my Changewing friend, but nobody answers me. It is almost like, since I must have woken up, the whole world has changed.

Everything I think I know about the world I am living in has been proven wrong. My one thought is only to find my friend. I want to ask him about all the care he showed me. Dragons aren't well known for their compassion. I want to know what makes the two of us different.

I want to remember what had made this spark of care generate inside me. I want to know why I feel I need to respect other living creatures, why they should be respected.

I want to no longer feel afraid of who I am, what I'm becoming. I want to go back to who I was.

And, most of all, I want to find my home.

The sun is rising. I can see it coming up through the clouds, creating a golden halo of light. After night, dawn is my favourite time of day. No matter how many times I fly up here to watch the sunrise, it is ever changing and always beautiful.

I don't know why I've always loved it. Maybe it's signifying the start of a new life. A new beginning.

Or maybe the death of the night. The end of the darkness' reign of terror.

This is the time when I no longer control the skies. My pitch black wings create a perfect silhouette on the wispy clouds or the gently glowing sun. I could not be an easier target.

I glide slowly westward, letting the currents take me where they like. I allow myself to succumb to the gentle breezes and warm updrafts changing my course, in the hope that another dragon may have done the same. I watch the sunrise, and then I dive down through the clouds, calling for my friend.

My highly tuned ears pick up a faint sound.

I don't recognize it. It sounds like a Changewing, but not the one I know so well. The subtleties in the sounds and vocalisations… they're not quite the same. But, it has proved to me there is still life here.

All I need to do now is find the one I want to talk to.


	5. Silence

**This is LesserWraith's chapter. Enjoy!**

* * *

**T**

_Where_ _are_ _you?_ I screech, diving through the clouds in search of my friend. Is it him that sent that sound through the air? Is it this destination that I'm headed towards, that will lead me straight towards the face of the friend that had given me flame and fire?

I sail in and out of the atmosphere, but I find nothing. The howling winds must be too high for him to be up here. Only a dragon with a powerful wingspan would be able to stand roaring winds this strong. That is, of course, me. But if he can't be up here, then I have no reason to be here. I head downwards towards a series of lush green forests.

_Where_ _are_ _you?_ I call, passing over the green canopy of tree tops that litter the scene below me. Beneath, I can see the colourful sights of birds and plants that look so different from the ones that I once saw.

_Where_ _are_ _you?_ I ask, landing onto the soft grass, the soft patch of land below me billowing at my landing.

I turn around frantically, searching for any signs of dragons that may have landed on the ground below. What has happened to them, and why? Who is still surviving? When did all of this happen, anyway?

Who, what, when, where, why. Five questions with zero answers to any. The possibilities are endless, yes, but what is the chance that any of them could happen? There is no real place for us to go, if not the nest. Which is ironic, since I'm already days and days away from where I was once was, where I was once controlled what _was._

I see nothing now. Only the greenery of the forest, the dark of the ground, and the blue of the endless sky.

But no red of a Changewing.

**H**

"Hiccup," a voice calls.

"No," I say. My eyes don't move from the horizon one bit. I care so little for the voice behind me that I don't even identify who's behind me. I just can't think of anything else.

If Toothless died, I would have died too. I wouldn't have been able to go on- if I did, I would just walk mindlessly and just hope everything would just end anyway. But now, Toothless is free, but my heart is being shredded over and over again every day. I have no will to sleep, knowing that Toothless is still out there, but when I do, I feel no want to wake up, either. It's the fact that I know that Toothless is OK, that he still may have a chance to see me again, actually, that provides me enough fuel for me to even just sit up and eat. He might not know me any more, but I sure still do.

And it hurts. It hurts so much. If waiting for your lover is pain, then waiting for your friend is agony, because you not only love care for them, but also know that they'd do the same for you as well. How many times have I woken up in the night, cry, not see Toothless on the stone in front of me, and cry even more? I'm waiting for you, Toothless, and I need you by my side. You would have done the same for me.

"Hiccup."

I don't turn. I don't do anything, in fact, except stare at the setting sun as it dips back into the Earth.

"Go away."

A hand touches my shoulder, and I instantly snap towards the source of the offender. My eyes slit, much like how Toothless did, and look at the assailant untrustingly.

"Astrid."

I've been saying so little words that I sometimes don't even know how to communicate anyway. All the words and all the feelings I hold deserve to go only to Toothless, for he has been the only one who has listened to me from the start.

"I know that it's been tough for you," she says, her face anything but gentle to me. I can't believe that I like her. But not even her smile can hide the fact that I am very, very, very, much more concerned about someone else than her. If only things were as they were before, we could have made the perfect match. Now, we just lie in splinters out of the box we were once in, extinguished and useless to the world.

"Why," I ask myself, watching indifferently as Astrid sits down next to me. "Why?"

"Why did he have to go?" Astrid asks from my side. I shake my head. Really, is there nothing better for this girl to do? I'm so sick of her care right now. Doesn't she know that all her care that she has for me was possible only because of Toothless?

"No," I say, staring at sealine. "Why… life."

"Life?" Astrid asks, peering at me curiously. "You never told me why Toothless isn't here now, Hiccup. How am I supposed to know what you're talking about?"

"Then don't," I say flatly, my monotone voice adding even more to the tension between us.

"Don't what?" Astrid asks.

"Don't ask," I say, not facing her.

"But I want to know!" she says. "You can't just keep all this to yourself!"

"No," I say. "You don't feel… what I feel. You'll ruin it."

"Ruin what?" she asks, moving closer to me. I want to move away, but the horizon just has so many unanswered questions that I cannot help but stay.

"No," I say, wanting the conversation to end. "Not worth... if you don't feel."

She leans in closer to me. "You can tell me, Hiccup. I'm right here," she says caringly.

"Toothless isn't," I point out bluntly. Unfortunately, Astrid does not faze like I thought she would.

"We can talk about this," she says. "I like you a lot, you know. I don't want you to feel bad alone."

I don't answer. Instead, I feel the scent of Astrid as she looms on closer and closer to me.

She leans in _too_ close. She's going to kiss me. If it were any time that was not now, _any_ time that I knew that Toothless was OK, I would have accepted this kiss- and returned it to her in equals. But not today. Or from now on, until I can find Toothless once again.

"No!" I shout, getting up and leaving her hanging there. "Go away!"

"Hiccup!" she snaps, getting up too. "Just tell me already! What happened?!"

"I don't… know!" I yell, my hands grabbing at my hair furiously. I haven't washed it in several days. "I don't want… to know!"

At these words, I take off towards the house, my tears flowing once again. No one can share my pain, because no one knows how bad it feels.

I don't know about anything anymore. Except for Toothless, and that he is killing me, but at the same time keeping me alive.

* * *

**L/N: Well, it looks like I will seriously be not updating more than often now. I will, however, do my best. **


	6. Cohort

**Welcome back! This is Absi B's chapter.**

* * *

**T**

I smell something. I lift my nose and cautiously sniff the air, in a way I feel I have done before. More and more often I get the feeling there is something missing from my existence, something I had once, but I've lost and no longer have. It haunts me day and night. I wish I could find out what it was I've forgotten.

Wandering round the forest following my nose, the smell is getting stronger. Is this who I've been looking for? But while the scent of dragon in the air is clear to me, I can see no sign of him. Eventually I walk out onto a windy outcrop of rock, the edges diving down towards the sea, meeting it in a mass of choppy water and frothing foam. I have still not seen any sign of life here, save birds and insects. What is it I can sense, if my friend is not here? Whitherward is he going?

Suddenly an invisible battering ram slams into my side, knocking the wind out of me and sending me tumbling perilously close to the spiky cliff face. I quickly scramble to my feet, ready to ward off another attack. But my attacker has since fled. Before I can think more about what had just happened, I was no longer on the ground. I fly through the air, and I start falling.

It is at this point that I realise my unseen assailant has knocked me off the cliff. In a dim corner of my mind I remember that I have wings, and, for me, being thrown off a cliff is little more than a minor inconvenience. Spreading my wings, I arrest my tumble sharply and power upwards, determined to find who it is that keeps on trying to kill me. This attacker is evidently quite dim. They have no knowledge of my skills or powers.

So I wait just below the edge of the cliff, then quickly swoop upwards and shoot a plasma blast at the cliff, engulfing it in searing blue flames. I stay and examine my work, trying to make out the shadow of a dragon. Eventually, I see the flames are being bent around an apparently invisible object. I dive towards it, reaching out with my claws to grab my enemy. The grab is successful, and I carry my prize up to the top of a tree, and deposit it unceremoniously on a high branch.

To my surprise, I see a Changewing. No. Not just _a _Changewing. _The _Changewing. The one I've been searching for. But since I have seen him last, he has changed.

His scales are no longer shiny and lustrous; they are dull and dark. His eyes, which once burned with a passion I had not seen in many eyes, were now only dull amber orbs, oblivious to the world around them. The way he sits on the branch suggests to me how he has aged, and he is obviously tired from the effort it took to push me off the cliff and keep up his camouflage for that length of time.

_Why did you try and do that to me? _I ask, anger in my voice.

_Didn't… know… it was you… _he wheezed, the fight having taken its toll on him. _What do you want?_

_I want answers, _I reply.

_About what?_

_Why is the nest destroyed? What happened to all the other dragons? What is this feeling of care that lives inside me? _The questions burst forth from me in a rush. I have been waiting for what seems like an eternity to ask them. He simply nods, drops from the branch and dives to the floor. I follow eagerly. When I reach the floor, he nods his head again, and starts to weave the answers to my questions into a beautiful story.

**H**

That night, I sleep on the podium that Toothless always slept on. I no longer care for the comfort of my bed and a blanket. I want to smell the familiar scent of burnt rock from whenever Toothless burns his podium to warm it up at night. The smell is almost absent now, but every now and then I catch a faint whiff of it, and it gives me new energy. It gives me the will to keep going, to find the dragon who changed my life forever.

I owe him that.

But… I don't know where to start. I mean… I don't even know where he's gone. I know if I steal a ship and set out right now, the chances of me finding him are almost nil. Waiting here is the better option. In case he remembers who he was, who I am.

Not that it's likely. But each claw mark, each charred section of rock and earth gives me new hope.

Sitting on Toothless' podium contemplating what action to take, I realise that staying put really is the only thing I can do. But… it doesn't feel right inside. I can feel my soul yearning to do something other than just wait and see what the future brings.

Well. If I can't do anything to get the real Toothless back, I decide that I can give him a friend to come back to. Maybe he will even see my creation and land on the island. Maybe it will help me to get him back. These futile thoughts seem fully fledged ideas and dreams.

I run out of the house, the sun just breaking the horizon and spilling deep orange light over the calm ocean, and around the village gathering loose bits of timber and tar, bits of metal and scraps of carts and old clothes. The monument to my friend I plan to build can show Toothless how much I've left unsaid between us. How much he did for me, and I never did anything back. Now, I'm going to repay all that he did for me in one gift. A gift of a Night Fury.

* * *

**A/N: A plot will hopefully be emerging soon! As always, any reviews, whether good or bad, are appreciated. Please tell us what you think!**

**Also, thanks to AtkiakFF for inspiring me to make this chapter! You rock.**


	7. Truth

**Here it is! All the more longer chapters for you to indulge in.**

* * *

**H**

As I grab scrap by scrap of metal from my workshop, my hands begin to seriously ache. I don't falter from my work, though, despite the throbbing in my hands and the pounding in my soul. What I want right now is for the things that I never got around to do to be finished, and I'm not going to let a few simple stupid detriments get in my way.

I carry my metal and plans up towards the cliff. It is there that my plan is most likely to work out, even if it will be just a shout to the void, a yell into the never ending sea that drowns out all sounds that come across with its own might torrents.

As I reach the top, I lay down the foundation of my creation down on the cliff's grassy surface, a rectangular piece of wood that will allow the rest of the metallic parts to follow. I begin to stack up piece upon piece of metal onto the base, letting the joints fit each other and the holes and nails slide in perfectly. In a way, this is what I do to keep myself intact. It feels like as I put these metallic parts together, my sanity is also being slowly put together as I remind myself what I am doing and who I am doing this for. Life can only be lived once, and despite being a wreck of what I used to be, this is what I choose to be.

For a friend who no longer knows that I exist, for someone whose chances of ever returning here are near to never. It is this kind of hopelessness that I find hope in, the despair that I find the fuel to go on.

As I add in the middle pieces, the whole stature wobbles incessantly. I need to hold this in place to place the top parts, where the nails will connect and lock it into place.

Of course, with my puny build and little interest in physical combat, the pieces topple over.

To my surprise, the pieces land into the hands of a pair of twins.

"Hey, Hiccup," Tuffnut says. I force myself to look into his eyes, having not looked into anyone else's for so long, not even my father, and for the first time, I see true worry in his face. I would not cared if it were any other time, but with the pieces and joints in his hands at the moment, I have little to no choice to express my gratitude, even if I am saving it all for the Toothless who is likely to never come back.

"Hey," I say in monotone. "What… is it?"

"We heard from Astrid that you were having a hard time," Ruffnut, at Tuffnut's side, picking up a fallen nail and examining it. "How much is it exactly to be hard?"

"A lot," is all I can say. I can't bear to tell them that they'll never get my pain, because if I do, it'll just be a reminder to how weak I am, to be prone to the pains that I alone cannot share to others.

"Well, then, I'm here to help," Tuffnut says confidently, shoving his sister to the side. "At least you'd need some more arms to get the job done."

When I don't ask why, he doesn't tell me why either.

"How about I begin by giving him yours?" Ruffnut says, coming back with a hammer in hand and smacking her brother wide on the helmet. Tuffnut lays the metal parts on the ground and gives her a low kick.

"How about I give him a piece of your _leg?_" he asks viciously. "It's not like you'll be needing it."

Despite their small skirmish and seemingly humorous remarks, I do not feel anything but grey nonchalance in my brain.

"How about-" Ruffnut begins, but abruptly stops as she sees me head back to putting the contraption together. Tuffnut gives her a glare, and follows me to the foundation.

"What are you making, anyway?" he asks, grabbing a part in place and letting me slide in a rod that allows the immovable object to move.

"Light… reflector," I answer. I'm actually surprised by my own speech, for I did not think that I would answer, but I answer him anyway. If he is willing to help, then he maybe deserves something back from me. It would never be like that Toothless did for me, for he did everything without needing repay, but humans are not selfless creatures that think like dragons like Toothless.

"Light what?" he asks curiously, but when I don't answer again, he just holds the pieces in place for me to affix.

"He means a mirror, you idiot," Ruffnut says, handing me a rod that fits perfectly with the foundation that Tuffnut is now holding together. "He's going to look at his face with it."

"No way," Tuffnut says, giving me a shocked look. "Don't you have your own mirror?"

I give him a sharp glare, a sign of irritation that I could have never given them if I was normal. He falls silent.

"Whatever," Ruffnut mutters, handing me another metal rod. "I don't want to know why you'd look at yourself here. Gross."

We do the rest of the work in silence, Tuffnut joining the base, middle, and top parts together and Ruffnut handing me what I need. All I really do is slide the joints together and put the rods into place. I feel like my efforts should be more than this, for Toothless, but I can't do it alone- despite my determination to. It may as well be comforting that there is someone who is willing to help, but what comfort do I know of left, other than that of the warm scales of Toothless?

"Is that the mirror you're talking about?" Ruffnut asks, eyeing the shiny shield that I took time to cover the whole thing in sheets of metal, all elaborately patterned in a way that it would shine its symbol.

"Yes," I say. When she goes over to pick it, I move in to take it instead. I want to make this part special. I want to make this part… for him.

Emblazoned with the symbol of the Night Fury, I put the plate onto the circular pad that awaits connected to the right side of the rods. I slide the rest of the nails in, and nod silently to tell Tuffnut that it's enough.

"What's it do?" he asks wonderingly, stepping away from the small light reflector.

I watch the sunlight as it shines just above us. I turn the screen to the left, and as if by magic, a white symbol of the Night Fury appears on one of rocks far into the sea.

"Whoa!" Ruffnut says, holding her hand to her forehead to see the sight before her. "Are you using magic?"

"No, you blockhead, he's using the light to paint the rock," Tuffnut says, which gets more or less of a punch from her. As they begin to chase each other back and forth, I look stare at the picture triumphantly. I turn the reflector to another rock, and it is there where a the Night Fury's sign shows up as well. For the first time in several days, I smile.

It's the tribute to the greatest friend I've ever had, and it's the best that I can do. It's far better than just sitting around and crying over his departure, at any rate.

I wonder what I'll make for him next, I think, smiling to myself as I watch the twins fight each other.

**T**

_It happened a while ago…_ Changewing says, resting atop a tree not far from my own. Night has fallen, and the Fury is listening to his friend intently. If he is the one who shown me care, he is the one who deserves my protection and listening.

_The event occured not long before the Queen was disturbed from her resting place,_ he says.

_She was disturbed?_ I ask, my eyes widening in awe, momentarily forgetting the loss of the den. _Does that mean…_

_Yes,_ Changewing says. _She's… gone._

Though the Queen was very much hated by the dragons of the den, she was still feared and respected by the dragons there, and thus had a higher level of vocabulary 'interrupted from her resting place' simply means that she died. Did she? I never really liked her much. But no one ever has. No one likes to be oppressed.

_Who fought her control? Who lead the attack?_ I ask eagerly. _Even I was never able enough to lose her from my consciousness._

_It was the humans,_ Changewing says, taking me back by surprise. _They found her and they put her to rest, the dragons there said._

_Still good for us, _I say, snorting. I guess if we couldn't do it, someone had to. _What happened before that?_

I sense his nervousness as he thinks his words out. Dragons have this kind of thoughts that allow us to sense emotions and thoughts inside one's mind. I tend to use it to detect oppression towards the younger dragons that try to defy the rule of the den.

Not that I am that much older than them, of course.

_They… attacked us too,_ Changewing says. _The humans._

_Huh?_ I ask, my ears perking up. _I thought you said they freed us from the Queen's control._

_They found us before they found the Queen,_ he says, baring his teeth slightly. _It was like they were hunting down dragons._

_What?_ I ask, getting up in shock, my faith in humans evaporating like spitfire. The tree branch shakes below me, but I am far too preoccupied with his words to care.

_I believe it was a pre expedition,_ he says, growling.

_What happened?!_ I say, straightening up and looking at him with anxiety.

_There weren't a lot of dragons in the den when they destroyed the whole den, but…_

_**They destroyed the den?**_ I ask, my eyes burning from rage and pain. _**How about the dragons?**_

I remember nothing of the time after the bola hit, but I remembered every single dragon that was under my control. I may be solitary, but I have feelings as well. Including feelings for a certain dragon in there…

_Most of us were on raids when they came,_ Changewing says. _Including me. But not… her._

I roar in fury, firing a blast of fire at the nearest tree. It becomes incinerated and completely erased from the ground in seconds, my rage being the main source of firepower in the attack.

_Her?_! I yell, getting up and spreading my wings high in pure rage. My mind becomes violently unstable for a moment, her face still swimming longingly in my mind, _She… she never did anything to the humans!_

_The humans didn't care_, Changewing says, a grim look on his face, all the while alarmed, but expecting, of my outburst of rage. _To them, we are all dragons. Like how they shot that bola at you without a thought of who you were._

_Did they?_ I ask aggressively, opening my wings up in flight, my claws out and in a position to strike anyone who dares cross me. Any good thoughts that I once had towards the humans have all been replaced by pure hate and anger, accompanied by a rivaling bloodlust for them all. _Where are they, now?_

Changewing takes several seconds to consider answering my question. I almost rear up in anger. What's keeping him from telling me the truth?

_They're in the Isle not far from-_ he says carefully.

_The Isle?_ I ask, snorting and readying my fire. _I've raided that place often. I know what to do._

_But you-_ Changewing says, watching me as I get up in fierce determination.

_What?_ I ask, already up in the air. Changewing follows, though reluctantly.

_You do know that you have ties to that place-_

_What, you mean a single bola to my body?_ I ask, sneering. _Is that what you call ties? Or is this a pun of yours?_

_No, Night Fury-_ Changewing protests, taking after me in the air. Though he is not as fast as me, he is swift to keep up while he has the stamina to do so.

_I have to thank you, Changewing,_ I say, slowing down to a glide briefly to get my message through. _For showing me care and sentimentalism. But this is my fight alone, and I don't advise you to follow me. There will be deaths and you have your own children to take care of-_

_They're dead,_ Changewing cuts in, a pained look on his face. _After the attack on the raid._

_See?_ I say, finding a spot to point at. _All the more reason that I have to do this for you._

_Night Fury…_ Changewing says. _But I thought…_

_Thank you,_ I say, giving him an appreciative nod. _And goodbye… for now._

Not staying to hear the rest of his words, I flap my wings furiously and take off in flight.

The Isle is mine.

**C**

_…that your rider friend was there,_ I finish, watching hopelessly as he disappears into the distance.

* * *

**L/N: It's all yours, Absi B!**

**For all you AU fans out there, I recommend reading her equally interesting story of Dragon School while you're waiting.**


	8. Light

**Welcome! This is Absi B's chapter.**

* * *

**T**

Blood rushes like fire through my veins as I skim the tops of the waves. I'm flying towards one of the stone statues that guard the Isle. Its gaping maw holds a bright flame, almost like a dragon in human form. I dodge and weave between the totems, making sure to keep out of their pool of light. The humans will never know what hit them. Tonight, they will see my Fury.

The full moon casts a bright light on the ocean, illuminating the land below it with its lux. Not that I notice it as I speed towards the ones that killed my friend's children. The ones that let the dragon I loved die.

**C**

My labouring wings keep me in flight, but only just. My heart, once strong, is now pounding in my chest with the exertion. My flight pattern is erratic, but I am still fairly quick, though I will never be as fast as the Night Fury. I realised soon after he had gone that I could not just stand by and let this happen, no matter how weak I may be. I don't understand what he's doing to the place he knows and loves.

Does he still know and love the Isle?

I have never experienced the feelings he has, seeing as Changewings have always been reluctant to befriend humans. I have never experienced the feeling of love and care for somebody else, on a level where you will do anything in your power to keep them from harm.

As I fly, a wash of jealousy overcomes me. I realise that my one true longing, from the moment the Night Fury and his rider defeated the Queen, is to be cared for and loved like he has been. I know that my next act, even if I cannot survive through to the end, must be to give some warning to the humans. I know that they used to kill, hurt and capture us, but after the defeat of the Queen I feel indebted to the small boy. He freed us from her controlling powers, so those that remained were able to roam the world as they pleased.

I let out a call, shouting as loudly as I am able. I don't know if anybody hears me, but eventually somebody must.

**T**

My highly tuned ears pick up a faint sound. It sounds like the calling of a dragon. I ignore it, now so set on my mission nothing will make me deviate from my plan. I have landed on a small rock jutting out from the sea so that I can observe my target and see what obstacles I have to overcome. Using my keen eyes, I see a multitude of weapons. Their catapults are too slow and cumbersome to hit my nimble frame. Their lanterns that can be raised high into the sky cannot burn my fireproof hide. To them, I am invincible.

Nothing they possess can stop me from taking revenge on them.

Now that I have assessed what I am flying towards, I beat the air and rise up, silent and stealthy. Diving down once again to the waves, I hide myself in their undulating movements and dark shadows. I glide smoothly on the air, cutting through it as cleanly as my talons cut through bone. The Isle looms up ahead, but I have no fear of it.

The time has come for their short lives to end.

**C**

After stopping to land on a small island not far from the Isle, I quickly catch my breath and collect my thoughts. I have no hope of catching up to my friend. The only way I can lessen the devastation is to warn them.

I feel helpless.

Crying out once more at the top of my lungs, I shakily set off, trying to glide and conserve energy as much as possible. Periodically I call again and again, hoping against hope that something out there can hear my cry.

**H**

I play the Night Fury spotlight onto a different rock, adjusting the mirror. The full moon provides plenty of light for a strong silhouette projected wherever I choose.

I have spent the last few nights out here. Nearby is a small awning that I haven't slept under, and right now my body is ensconced in a woollen blanket. My hands, even though they would be much warmer inside the blanket, are not; instead, they clutch my leather-bound sketchbook and charcoal pencil. In my sketchbook I now have more designs, more things I can make for Toothless. In my mind, I imagine becoming chief and naming buildings and rocks in honour of him. My hands, as if with a mind of their own, sketch out a picture of the Cove, with Toothless standing in there as he was when I first saw him. I no longer need to consciously think about drawing Toothless; the shapes and angles of his body are so deeply ingrained in my memories that it is almost as if we are one with each other. My hand changes his expression from the slit-eyed and wary one I first saw, to the Toothless grin I know so well now. In the drawing he is looking up at me as a friend.

My hand falters as I realise that he will probably never look at me like that again.

_If_ he ever looks at me again.

Whilst I lie, buried deep within my thoughts, a faint cry penetrates the layers and reaches my centre. Pulling myself back to reality, I listen hard for that sound again.

Five minutes later, I hear the same cry, but slightly louder and more distinct. Getting to my feet, I look around for the source of this noise. It's not the cry of any dragon I know. My heart had been raised up with hope when I heard the cry, believing that it could have been Toothless; now, as I realise the sounds I hear don't match the ones imprinted onto my mind, it crashes back down to the floor, where it has been laying in pieces ever since that fateful day.

My eyes aren't good enough on their own to make out any distinct shapes in the night sky. I reach for my spyglass, then curse as I remember it's sitting on my desk in my bedroom. Leaving the mirror, awning, and blanket alone, I sprint down the cliff path, making a beeline for my house. Nobody is awake to hear my footsteps, which to me seem like thundering crashes against the soft ground. I reach my door, panting for breath, and carefully push open the door. Luckily, it's been oiled recently so the door only makes a faint brushing sound against the floor as it opens.

I carefully move up the stairs, and grab the spyglass from my desk, being careful not to disturb any of the countless papers and drawings scattered haphazardly across its surface.

**T**

A faint light in the corner of my eye attracts my attention. Surging upwards with a wave, I follow the faint glow to its source. The light appears to be coming from a solid rock. My eyes take in the shape, as I see now that the light has taken the shape of a dragon. I drift a bit higher on an updraft, and the light disappears completely. I look around in wonder, trying to work out where it has gone.

When my head turns back to the rock, the picture has magically reappeared.

I float upwards again, and at this point I see that the light is not coming from the light itself; it is being projected onto it from somewhere else. I turn, looking for the source of light, and see a reflective surface winking at me from a nearby cliff.

Cautiously I fly over to it, and land on the cliff. The cliff smells strongly of human. I don't know how or why I know what humans smell like, for I have never been close enough to one of them to find out. As that thought zips around my mind, I realise I have landed on the Isle.

My ears prick up, and I listen for any sign of movement.

Hearing none, I move slowly around the cliff, working out the best place to attack first.

**H**

I tiptoe down the stairs, and leave the house via the back entrance. As I turn to face the cliff path, I see a mysterious shadow blocking the light. As I focus more on the shadow, a dark shape comes into view at the top of the path. Raising my spyglass to my eye, I almost drop it again in shock.

No. This must be a dream.

Toothless is on the top of that cliff.

I rub my eyes once, twice, and Toothless is still standing on top of the cliff.

Surely… it can't be?

It must be another Night Fury, here by accident.

My brain whizzes through so many emotions and thoughts at once I don't know what to think. I almost cry out, and then remember if I do I will almost certainly become that dragon's next meal. Because if it _is _Toothless, he will remember nothing of me.

Inside, I am being torn in two. One half of me longs to see him again, to touch his scales and feel his warm body once more. The other half knows he is gone, and that I can never do that anymore. Conflicting thoughts and feelings are battling within my soul, one trying to establish dominance over the rest.

Finally, one emotion wins the fight.

It is _fear._

_Fear _that Toothless will never know me again. _Fear _that he won't remember my face when he sees it for the first time. _Fear _that I will die by the talon of my best friend.

* * *

**A/N: I hope I have not disappointed with this chapter; it's a bit of a cliffhanger ending but I like suspense.**

**L/N: You bet the next chapter is going to be fun.**


	9. Unreachable

**This is LesserWraith's chapter. Enjoy!**

* * *

**T**

This isle is completely dark at night- little to no lights light up anything except for the strange Night Fury light that still shines on the cliffs. I take it as a respect towards the dragons, as I am the guardian of the night dragons, and maybe this village worships Night Furies like me as their savior.

Well, that will change today. With everything that has happened, which determines everything that will happen, I take a long moment to survey the area around me. I can definitely feel the scent of a human here, their sweat and smells running deep into my nose. It is no doubt that this disgusts me beyond measure. We dragons no longer have a home to live in, and yet these evil bipedals think that they can sleep at night, knowing what they've done to the dragons?

How do they sleep at night, knowing what they have done to their worshiped guardian?

These people killed my friends. These people killed my lover. These people will pay.

And yet… there are many, many people in this town. If I am to take them all on at once, if one of them raises the alarm, I will be in big trouble. I have to move in and assassinate them one by one… kill them all. Humans have been renowned for their lack of defenses whatsoever, and with my claws ready to strike, you know very well what will happen with these petite fools that think that life is about killing and celebrating.

Under the night of the Night Fury, I move down the cliff and begin my search for humans to pick off and avenge.

**H**

I can't believe it. Toothless. Back on Berk, with no memory of me, no care for me, no… knowing of what I think of him. There are so barriers up dividing us up, but yet he's standing right there, on the cliff, checking the land in front of him carefully, looking for a place to strike.

Will he remember me? Does he still have that flame inside of him, that may trigger a trigger and remind him of whose care was given to him, whose /love was given to him, despite him not knowing anything anymore?

Toothless is heading down the cliff, growling at objects that pass by and looking for, if I'm not wrong, any signs of human life. I do not see the cheerful green-eyed Toothless from several weeks before, but instead a dull red and possibly angry Night Fury who seeks to find revenge on something. I've only seen this kind of cautious aggression when he fought the Whispering Death, his eyes determined to hurt those he focuses on.

If he gets into the village, there will be no doubt that he will wreak havoc among the village. But more than that, he will be bringing upon himself a death sentence, with all the people here and all the weapons we have. I can't let him get there, but I cannot guarantee my own safety- and his- with just me. I would blasted down and even… eaten by him, and then he'd just move on to harm the rest of Berk. He might not be destructive, but he's bloodhungry.

Toothless sees a hanging clothesline and bursts it into flames. Though the house's inhabitants do not notice, I certainly do, and I've got to do something to stop it. Those flames might cause someone to notice, and no doubt that they will come to put it out, or even worse, wake up the house.

I want to get out, but I can't… I can't go out. Toothless doesn't remember me. But if I don't… the village…

Toothless…

No. I don't want to die by the hands of him. I can't let my life go to waste after all I've waited and done for him.

But how do I let him know any of this? Surely he won't even remember what Norse sounds like? Or will he read my thoughts and remember me? Those eyes do not give me any hope of sentimentality at all. It is as if he is here for one reason, and one reason only.

Kill.

And he's headed this way.

I watch with bated breath as Toothless walks onward, passing my house slowly and growling at the ground with anger. As I get the overhead view of him, I see that his tailfin is healed and whole- which makes me the slightest of happy. But right now, I wish he still had the artificial tailfin on him, so he would not be able to leave, so that he would have to rely on me to fly anywhere once again.

Not that he'd let me, of course. Which makes me think, as he walks past by slowly, not noticing my shadowy form above, on the verge of tears from my unreachable feelings, what life he must have had before he met me. Surely I am not all he has known of in his life; his life is his, and it is not mine to think of his life being aligned with mine perfectly. He must have… had friends before. He must have had a lover. He must have had adventures and fun and /love before. Was what I ever gave him enough for him to forget all that? Why did he never leave me? Was the tailfin always a detriment to his leave, yet he never showed it, because he wanted me to be happy? If I let him be, will the love that he will get back with his old life be greater than the one that I have given him? I've loved him the most when he was gone. What good does that make me?

As Toothless walks out of the house's range, I can't help but let out a small scream from my mouth. All my feelings, all my thoughts, all about the black dragon walking by just under my nose, not even knowing what I feel, not even caring a single bit that there is someone who is dying inside to meet him once again, and right here, he's not caring, he's not going to care, and why should he? He has had a life before as well. He might as well have been better off there, not grounded with a stupid human, flying in the air with real friends and a real future.

Within seconds of my scream, a huge dragon appears at the window, snarling mercilessly, the moonlight illuminating him and giving off powerful aura of fierceness. With an easy shove, I am launched backwards towards the bed, causing my puny form to sprawl out on the ground, the wind being knocked clean from my body.

"Toothless," I breathe, trying to get myself off the bed as he slithers his way in, his fangs out and ready to strike. This is not the playful Toothless that I have known.

This is a full on, powerful, and very _angry_ Night Fury. All of the times that he's been with me, he has never harmed me. And yet, he has had the power to all along.

He advances on my still form, his snarls and hisses reminding me of his new, and original ways. He stands right on top of the rock that he once slept on, completely unaware of what that rock has been, and why. His moving form forces me to back me off in a corner, his snout and his sides completely unaware of the hands that once rubbed him there.

"Toothless," I breathe again. "Do you remember me?"

His figure stops for one moment, his eyes slitting in aggression. /Read my mind, please, I think in my head. /Know what I feel and what I know of you.

Unfortunately, he does not think that humans have complex minds like dragons, and does not bother to. I don't think he could have, anyway, because there is no shared flame between us anymore.

Toothless roars and takes a huge leap towards me, his fangs out and his fire very much active and ready for the kill.

"Toothless," I breathe one last time. As he heads right towards me, I close my eyes.

**T**

Stupid human, thinking that squeals and frightened expressions will give me pity on his paralyzed form. He knows, of course, what is coming for him, and I do not think that he knows of anything to stop me. I can see pictures of mine in the room. Drawings, little sculptures, and even a reminiscent of my scales are aligned along the wooden stall not far from him. Though this place smells faintly of dragons, I do not care. Maybe this little boy has been killing dragons as well. How does one worship and kill dragons at the same time? What sick kind of beings think like that?

Well, he won't being thinking anymore. He'll be dead in a matter of seconds.

As I lunge towards him, I am met with a powerful red form that blocks off me completely. I crash into another dragon's body, knocking me backwards. I rear back and roar in anger.

_Changewing!_ I yell, snarling at him as he recoils from the collision. I see him standing right over the puny human with slit eyes toward me. _This kill is mine! Find your own prey!_

_Do you know nothing?_ he snarls right back. _Have you seriously forgotten who this human is to you?_

_All humans are prey, and so is he,_ I growl. _Back off._

_Listen,_ he says, taking up a defensive stance. Even he knows that he is a goner when it comes to fighting. He doesn't even bother to show his offensive stance. _This human… is your friend. Why can you not remember him?_

_I know nothing,_ I growl, my claws coming up and ready to strike. _Except that these beasts killed off the whole nest. They will have to pay the price in blood._

_You idiot!_ Changewing snarls. _A Night Fury, forgetting the most important of things! You should be ashamed of yourself-_

As he says this, I launch myself towards him and pins /him towards the wall instead. The human still has not moved from his spot, which will make my work easily. He is squealing something, though, but I take no notice. I am more angry at my friend's betrayal.

_What the hell, Changewing?_ I roar, my front legs pinning him to the wall, his hissing beyond my caring. _What has gotten into you?_

_What has gotten into_ you_?!_ he roars right back. _You used to do everything for this boy! You once flew with him as equals! And now… you're going to take this innocent life? The life that gave you everything in your absence?_

_Absence?_ I growl. _Is that what you're calling that, now?_

_Do you really think that you were out that whole time? Have you ever used that brain of yours to consider any other possibilities?_

_I don't want to hurt you,_ I snarl. _Don't make me._

_You ungrateful-_

He gets to say no more as I swipe him forcefully across the neck, causing his body to fly towards the side of the room, crash into the wall with a _thud_, and lay unconscious out on the floor.

_Completely out of his mind,_ I mutter to myself. I shake the thought aside and turn towards the stationary human.

* * *

**L/N: What do you think happens next? Even I don't know. :P**


	10. Bound

**Here it is. A nice long chapter for you to read and enjoy! This is ****Absi B****'s chapter.**

* * *

**T**

I can see the puny boy spread-eagled on the floor before me. He seems too weak and small to be a dragon killer of any real skill or standing. Baring my teeth and brushing my claws against the rock I am standing on, I prepare to end the life of this beast. I roar, seemingly terrifying the boy.

**H**

As I listen to Toothless roar in a way he only would have done before I befriended him, I am reminded of how much I have that he doesn't. The memories he once had about everything we have done have been obliterated, replaced by his original thoughts and feelings. Feelings like _hate _and _anger_ towards us.

Towards me.

But I can't just surrender like this. I have to give him the chance to reclaim who he was. There are still so many things I have to tell him. I still have to read the book I wrote for him aloud whilst he sits on his podium, crooning.

I have to share the skies with him once more, revelling in the cold blast of air on my face and body as we surge up and down, performing daring acrobatic tricks only the closest friends would trust each other enough to perform. I realise now that ever since he has been gone, I have longed to fly again.

Before, he could not fly without me; once Toothless had gone, I realised that I needed him to fly. We needed each other.

I have to share my inner flame with him again, let him know my true thoughts and feelings in a way nobody else can. I need to save him… from himself.

Suddenly, whilst I am staring death by the hand of my former best friend in the face, I decide that there is no better time to start repaying the debt I owe to Toothless than right now.

"Toothless. You probably don't remember me. How much do you know?..."

**T**

I stop and stare keenly at the deep green eyes of this boy, thinking dimly how the colour of them are so like my own. The words coming from his mouth don't seem to register in my brain's shocked state. I am here, about to play this boy's final card for him, and he starts talking? To me?

Finally his words manage to worm their way to my mind and take root.

"Do you know about this place? Do you recognise these things?" At this, he gets to his feet, knees shaking along with his voice. He shuffles over to the desk and picks up some items. Some drawings, seemingly of me, although I have no knowledge of posing for any of them. A book, crudely decorated with a curled up dragon on its cover. Scales, again apparently mine. They have the unmistakeable hue and shape of a Night Fury's. My sharp mind runs quickly through all the possibilities, but quickly arrives at a single answer. There is only one way he could have got those scales.

He was the one that shot me down. A puny _boy_, who can't even scream to save his own life, shot _me_ down.

I no longer care about listening to his words; he has chosen his final sentences poorly. A red mist descends over me, clouding my senses and eliminating every thought except one: kill the boy.

Slitting my eyes and baring my teeth, I leap forward and grab his narrow neck in my paw. I force him against the same wall the Changewing got thrown against earlier.

Now I can see the fear in his eyes. He is breathing rapidly, his chest heaving with huge gasps.

He is pleading, desperately trying to make me spare him.

Nothing he says or does will change my mind now.

**H**

I have completely lost control of my body. My survival instincts have kicked in, and now my hand, clutching the dagger I always keep in my vest so tightly the knuckles have turned white, is poised by Toothless' heart, ready to strike and do what it must for me to survive.

I hold the knife up, knowing that I will never the strength of body or will to drive it into his scales. I know that in there lies the memories of me, and if I destroy the heart, his memories of me are no longer just locked away, waiting to be released; they are gone forever.

He will never know me again.

In my exhausted and terrified state, I start gabbling and pleading. Trying to appeal to a better nature that no longer exists.

"Toothless, no! Please! Don't you remember me? You must remember me. Why are you doing this? Please, just spare me this one time and I'll show you. I'll prove that you really do mean something to me. I know that in your heart you can do what is right. Please, I don't want to die like this. Come on, just _remember me_!" The last two words turn into a yell. My final stand over, I stare defiantly at his face, like he did in the forest that day, and dare him to end my life.

**T**

Oh, good. The boy has finally stopped speaking. Now I am so close to his body, I can smell the pungent scent of sweat, and another, almost indiscernible odour. It smells like… me.

Surely the smell from the bolas would have washed off by now?

This final, miniscule pause turns out to be my undoing. A pair of arms like tree trunks snake around my snout and force it closed. I feel my teeth digging painfully into my gums and retract them. My head is slammed against the ground, making me feel woozy. In the background, I can hear a faint voice calling out.

"Dad, no! Please… just don't hurt him!"

**H**

I cry out, this time at my father, who is forcefully holding Toothless' mouth closed. At this point it is all suddenly too much, and I collapse to the floor, sobs racking my small frame.

I've suddenly realised the words I said to my father are almost identical to the ones I used when he first captured Toothless. It seems like a lifetime ago that I was standing in the woods, knife poised above my head, ready to strike. An identical knife is sitting in my relaxed palm right now. Noticing it is there, I cry out and fling it through the open hatch in the roof. I never want to see a weapon again. I never want to see anything again.

Except Toothless.

"A beast is always a beast, it seems," my father pants, his arm still firmly pressed down on Toothless' head. "You're not hurt, are you?"

"No, I…" I begin, only stopping when I realise I have no words to say. My brain has seized up with the shock of Toothless, and now this. My talking and yelling, the flames outside… were they the things that alerted my father?

"I see that underneath all that kindness, at his centre he never really changed," he says, glaring at the dragon.

"No! He doesn't remember me!" I yell, scrambling to my feet. "It's not his fault. I cried out to him!"

"We'll see about that later," he replies in an emotionless tone.

"DAD! Do you not care about Toothless at all? Don't you care that he saved my life when I fell into the inferno at the dragon's nest? Don't you care that he once showed me compassion, letting me live when all I did was hurt him? Don't you care that the one thing that has been keeping me alive these past days has been the thought of Toothless?" I hang my head, my anger raging and my emotions running wild.

My flame is now burning so brightly I fear it could consume my insides with its force. It seems that it is not love or care that keeps my flame burning brightly; it is sadness, or anger. The sadness I have been embroiled in since Toothless left is the thing that kept the flame burning inside- burning with enough passion to encourage me to make the mirror and write the book for him.

Through my streaming tears I see the black form of Toothless being held down roughly by my father. Overcome with emotion, the anger and sadness giving me strength, I stagger over to him and try and move his arms from Toothless' body. He doesn't budge in the slightest, proving to myself once again that I am too weak to save even those I love the most.

"Let him go. Please! He won't hurt anybody!" I yell.

**T**

_Yes, he will, _I think, attempting to snarl with my mouth forced shut by the burly Viking. But the older man seems unmoved by his protests, and keeps a strong hold on me.

Obviously he knows a lot more about fighting and capturing dragons than his son.

"Hiccup. Go and get Gobber, and tell him to bring ropes and restraints. Go!"

The boy, with tears still streaming down his face, almost falls down the stairs going to alert this _Gobber_.

This isn't how it should be right now. Tonight, I should have been the hunter, the Night Fury, the dealer of death to anything that crosses my path. I should have brought the corpse of those who killed my friends back to show them he has been slain.

Now, it will surely be my own corpse that will hang on their wall.

**H**

I can't believe what my feet, seemingly ignorant of my thoughts, are doing. I am going to _help _the capture of my best friend.

The walk through the cool night air gives me some time to think about Toothless. I still think of him as my best friend, even though he no longer knows me as one. In a way, I have lost my best friend, but I know that, even if he does come back, he will still be locked deep inside me. There's a special stronghold in my heart for memories of Toothless, and in the time that has passed since his departure, I have opened it and meticulously gone through every minute and insignificant memory I have of him. I wanted to make sure that I never forgot a single detail, a single angle of his features or shade of his eyes.

Now he no longer knows me, I have to give him my memories. Try and help him rebuild who he was with my memories.

Even though he is a Night Fury, famed for being solitary and efficient killers, I have seen nothing but kindness and compassion, and a longing for companionship in Toothless. I want to try and find those traits once more.

No. I _have _to find those traits once more. I _need _him back. Or my life isn't worth living any longer.

I try to drag the walk to Gobber's house out as much as possible, until I realise that Toothless will be much happier with his nose not squashed up against the rough wooden planks that make up my floor. My vision still fuzzy, and my mind still not quite able to comprehend the incredible events of the night, I reach Gobber's door and begin to pound on it.

After what seems like years, the groggy face of Gobber finally appears round the door. Seeing my face, he recoils in shock.

"Gobber! Come quickly! My dad… he's got Toothless. Bring ropes and restraints. Please, help." Without saying a word Gobber disappears into his house for a few agonising minutes, then re- emerges, his arms full of ropes and belts.

"So, the famed Night Fury has returned, eh?" he says, yawning and holding out some of the belts to me. I refuse to help, not wanting to be part of restraining Toothless any more than I have to.

Silently we rush back to my bedroom, where Toothless is still being held against the floor. Gobber begins to wind the ropes around Toothless' body, keeping them secure with complicated knots.

**T**

The feeling I have now is something akin to the one I had when I was shot down by the brown haired boy standing before me. Another hulking man with one hand is binding my wings together, rendering me unable to fly. All the while, I see the boy (Hiccup?) is trying hard not to intervene.

Why would he want to stop them tying me up? After all, I only want to kill him. Even though the blinding anger has long since dissipated, I feel like I can never leave a person like this alive.

The others finish tying my wings and begin to haul me downstairs. I take one last glance around, remembering now the Changewing, who has seemingly disappeared. The two burly Vikings drag me across the village and towards a large metal cage. I make no moves to help the pair; they made me suffer, and robbed me of my revenge.

Why should I help them?

I am bundled into the arena, where the gate is promptly slammed down on the ground and locked securely into place. Now I shift around, trying to find the least uncomfortable position for me to spend the rest of the night in. I see the two adults walking away, uncaring, but the boy remains.

He sits down on the cold stone, and watches me silently.

Why does he humiliate me further with his tearful face and slumped posture? He should be _glad_ to be alive, not saddened.

I think if I had killed him, the victory would have been…hollow. The boy seems to be willing to die.

I hate him.

**H**

What have I done to make Fate let us meet again like this? I wanted you to see my face and remember everything, to tackle me to the ground and lick me half to death. I wanted to walk and fly with you again.

I never thought that you'd come one day as my enemy, as my… executioner.

I never thought that you'd end up captured, on the other side of a wall that I cannot open. Yet another barrier that I cannot break down.

"Toothless," I call quietly. His eyes, narrowed into the smallest slits, glare at me, and he lets out a harsh grating roar. The lack of recognition in his eyes only upsets me further. I start to rock back and forth, hugging my knees close to my chest. "Toothless, oh, Toothless. I'm so sorry…"

I think I keep it up for hours. I have no way of knowing how much time has passed until I look up and realise that the black night has become the pale oranges and pinks of early dawn.

Even though the night has now become the fresh morning, I am still watching Toothless. The last few hours have sent my emotions swirling around once more. I don't know what to feel. To be honest, there is only one thing I _want_ to feel right now.

The warm raspiness of Toothless' tongue against my cheek.


	11. Unfathomable

**This is LesserWriath's chapter. Enjoy!**

* * *

"Toothless," I call the dragon behind the bars softly, hoping that he will hear me. "Toothless."

His eyes do not open, his body does not move. He is asleep, in the same resting position he has always been in. Head resting atop his front paws, his wings covering the rest of his body, his tail stretching out and curled up next to him. The only thing that is not present is the rhythmic breathing that indicates his carefreeness, which is totally nonexistent now, his eyes closed shut and his mouth pursed together in anger. Even in rest he does not rest.

"Toothless," I call again.

He makes no sign of remembering his name. The sound that when pronounced, defined who he was, and with that sound always brought a large smile to my face when called. Toothless knows nothing of that now. All he sees in his eyes are now hatred and anger.

It's been so many hours that I've been awake now, but none of them ever really compared to the time that I was asleep with Toothless, our hopes and dreams stored together as our hearts beating in unison. But now, he's asleep, I'm not, and nothing at all seems to be hinting that we may again share our care, find our place with each other again. I feel so sleepy, yet I cannot sleep. I can't help but watch Toothless as he sleeps peacefully on the inside but rages a storm on the inside.

This was all my fault. I should have never left Toothless alone in the woods. In fact, I should have never even met him, even if it aches me terribly to think so. If I knew that he would have to be going through all of this, just because of the reckless actions of a boy like me… he's a dragon. He's a majestic creature. I'm a human. I'm a lowlife with the will of only surviving in this world.

I'm a greedy, evil person, to watch Toothless locked up like this and not set him free. That would be the most rational thing to do. Just flip the lock right now and he'd never have to think of me again. He could be with his friends, his family… he might even have had kids waiting for him, only to never see him return.

But I don't let him go, because part of me still wants to be with him. I don't know what to do to make him know me again, but I want it to happen. I want him to wake up right now, knowing me and Berk again, crashing through the walls just to be with me.

Toothless stirs slowly, his croons evident through his snout. He gets up, eyes blinking once or twice, then gets up and walks towards the locked gate.

_Hiccup?_ he croons, studying the lock with apparent confusion.

I stare at him with an unbelievable expression.

"Toothless?" I ask, frozen to the spot with the unexpected turn of events. Is this real? Am I dreaming? I can't. Toothless is right there, smiling, our inner flames connecting once again, his voice plausible through the link that our mind created. "Is that really you?"

_I don't look like a Nadder, do I?_ he jokes, crooning happily, looking through the cage and at me. _Why am I in here? This doesn't look like home at all._

"You're back!" I say, getting on my feet instantly and rushing towards the locked cage. My arms are far too short to be able to hug him through the thick, iron bars, but he leans up close enough for me to feel his warm, promising scales on his snout.

_I was gone before?_ he asks curiously, sensing my heightening joy and giving me a coo. _Where?_

"I'll tell you later," I tell him eagerly, my hands fumbling with the lock. "C'mon, let's get you out of there first."

"Hiccup!" a voice behind me yells.

_Someone's calling you,_ Toothless says, nodding his head towards my back.

"Someone is-" I begin, but a strong hand yanks me backwards away from Toothless.

_Hiccup!_ Toothless roars, thrashing against the bars in anger, his eyes no longer caring and promising, but… furious.

"Hiccup!" the voice calls again. "Get up already, Hiccup!"

"Huh- huh?" I ask, opening my eyes, my body turning around wildly in search for the source of the noise, and more importantly, Toothless. A sinking feeling in my stomach tells me that all that happened earlier wasn't… wasn't…

Toothless roars angrily at the bars and claws at the iron in fury. His eyes show no care, and more importantly, his voice in my head is no longer there.

...real.

"Hiccup," the voice calls again, tugging harder at my back. "Hiccup!"

"Nn…," I moan, my heart dropping like an anchor, sinking to the bottom of the sea where my worst emotions lie. I must have dozed off, my wild fantasies of wanting him back causing all this, my heart thumping with a dull ache of melancholy of the real being unreal. "Why?"

"Bad dream?" Astrid asks, finally managing to pull me up from my sitting position. My eyes lock on Toothless, who is doing his best to try to break free from his prison.

"Good dream," I say, the wetness in my eyes appearing all of a sudden as I grip her shoulder tightly for support. "But…"

"Stoick said that he needs to talk to you," Astrid says. "About what to do with Toothless."

"Can it wait?" I ask, not looking away from the still-angry Toothless. "Toothless…"

I'm not sure if I should still call him Toothless, actually. The way he is and the memories that he has that do not include me are certainly not what Toothless is. He is more than the sum of his parts, and his care alone being more than every other emotion he is capable of.

And here he is, wasting it all by hurting himself with his escape attempts repeatedly. It takes all my might to not break free from Astrid's grasp and run up to him, tell him to stop hurting himself.

"No," she says grimly. "I know it's a hard time for you, but this is for Toothless, alright?"

"What does my dad want me to do?" I ask resignedly, tearing my eyes away from Toothless with immense difficulty. I do not know how I did it, or how long it took, but I am now staring into the distant sky that is not Toothless, and not at the dragon who deserves to be viewed. "Does it involve all of the other dragons as well?"

"Well," she says, holding my hand tightly. "You'll see."

**T**

**_Open, you idiots!_** I snarl, slamming myself at the cage with all my might but only managing to recoil back in pain. _Open!_

I see the boy slowly walking away and I roar at him.

_Come back! Set me free, you little…_ then I stop myself short of these words. Me, asking a little boy to set me free? Asking my _captor _to set me free? That's madness.

That's quite depressing as well. Here I am, stuck in a cage like a wild animal, asking for a defenseless boy to let me go. Imagine what the other dragons would say if they saw me like this, and what they would call me if they knew I was brought down by a puny human. I hate him with all I have. He's the reason why I'm stuck in all this mess. And I don't even know if I'm going to be able to get out. The chains are fireproof, the iron is fireproof, and even the foundation itself is fireproof. It's almost as if it was made to keep dragons in. There is nothing I can do to get out. I wish I couldn't say that, but it's true. And defying the truth leads only to destruction, even if the truth is that I'm stuck in a prison, waiting for execution, all fueled by my anger of a village of worthless humans.

I've never been under this kind of oppression before. I've always been free in the sky, the night dragons under my control, whatever I want to do would be done. The sky above me looks so promising, but nothing at all will be able to get me back in the air.

As the boy leaves the arena, I see him throw another glance back at me. I growl angrily at him, knowing that behind those sad looks lies the vindictive pleasure of being able to bring a Night Fury under custody. Maybe he thinks that if he looks miserable enough, I'll show sympathy towards him. Maybe he might want to train me as his _pet,_ if I don't get killed first.

I bare my fangs at the very thought. _Never._

To my surprise, another voice answers me.

_Never what?_ Changewing asks, manifesting himself on the other side of the cage.

_Changewing!_ I say, jumping up in relief. Despite my anger towards the boy, not to mention the events that led to my capture, I cannot help but feel happy at the fact that at least /someone knows what has become of me. _You're alright!_

_Funny you'd say that,_ he mutters, showing the large gash on the neck where I hit him. _But yes, I'm alright._

_Sorry,_ I say guiltily, pawing the ground nervously. _I was too fixed on killing the boy… I didn't listen to you._

_Whatever,_ he says gruffly, kicking aside a nearby bucket. _It doesn't matter._

It does, of course, but I don't tell him that. It doesn't look like he can feel immense guilt anyway, by the way he's acting.

_Why are you even here?_ I ask curiously. _I thought you were mad at me._

_I don't hold grudges,_ he shoots. _Unlike you._

_I… yeah,_ I admit._ I guess that would be true._

_I'm here to tell you what I know about that little boy and you,_ he says. _After what happened, you deserve to know._

_That little boy?_ I growl, my ears flattening in aggression immediately. _What importance does he have to me?_

_He's a lot more important than you think,_ he says. _But don't tell me that I'm delusional after I finish._

_Hmph,_ I say, sitting down and listening reluctantly to Changewing's story.

* * *

**L/N: Will Toothless believe Changewing's story? What will Hiccup's father say? ****Once again, Absi B, this shall be your call. You can leave us suggestions as well!**


	12. Disunity

**This is Absi B's chapter. Enjoy!**

* * *

**T**

_What do you remember of the raid that night when you got shot down? _Changewing asks me.

I need to think for a moment. I have no desire to remember the events of that night. The night in which I was belittled by that puny human. _I destroyed the catapult first, _I tell him._ As I was gliding back round to take another shot, that bola wrapped around my body and I couldn't fly. I remember barely controlling my descent, a forest and a large tree, a flash of pain, and then… blackness._

_You remember nothing of the boy? _Changewing asks, confusion evident in his voice. _From what I know, your bond was stronger than any other between a dragon and a human. He may have shot you down, but he found you and took pity on you the next morning; he let you go._

_When he came back to the woods again, he found you in a cove. Your tailfin had been torn away, so you couldn't escape. What events transpired in the cove that led to your first contact, I know little of. All I know is that the things left unsaid that day were stronger than any speech. After he put his trust in you, and you in him, that boy built you a new tailfin, and you learned to fly again, with him as your rider._

_You turned him from the village outcast to the boy everybody wanted to be around. I have heard that the time he spent with you, befriending you, was invaluable to his training. He was being trained to kill dragons._

_When he was in danger in the arena you stand in now, you rescued him at the price of your own freedom. You led the Vikings to the Nest._

_You and the boy alone finally conquered the Queen._

**_What?! _**I exclaim, barely comprehending the words he has just said. I try to lash out again at Changewing, but my paws and wings are bound, so I can do nothing. I frantically shuffle my body towards the edge of the cage where he is lying.

_Tell me I misheard you, Changewing. Tell me I was imagining all that you said, _I say, an edge of danger in my voice.

_No. All that I have told you is true. The Queen is dead; defeated by you and your rider._

_You _are_ delusional, _I snarl. There is not a word of this story I believe to be true. _Don't you think that if I did all of the things you've said with this boy, I would have some recollection of the bond we allegedly shared?_ I search his face and body for any sign that he might be lying, but his body language only exudes truth and honesty. He is an excellent con artist.

I trusted Changewing. I saw him as a friend who I could rely on to be true to me, but he has only lied and told me fantastical stories that have not a hope of being factual in any way.

I see now that I was wrong.

_Go away, _I growl quietly to him, anger and rejection seething from every pore. _Go away; I don't want to see you again. I thought I could trust you, but you have only lied to me._ When Changewing doesn't turn away, instead staring at me with a placid gaze, I finally snap.

**_Go away! _**I yell. At this, his face closes and his expression darkens. His eyes narrow to thin slits, and he weakly camouflages himself against the rocky backdrop.

_Hopefully you will soon see that I have never lied to you about the things that matter most to you, _he said, turning towards the cliff and diving down towards the waves. I watch for a few minutes longer, seeing his shimmering silhouette rising up above the level of the cliff once more, then accelerating away from me as he flaps his wings.

The minutes turn into hours. I have been watching that spot on the horizon for a long time now. The sun, which when Changewing left had been beating down on my black body from directly overhead, is now blinding me as it sets, setting the sky on fire and filling my vision with a ball of white light and a panorama of raging reds and oranges.

Deep in my heart, I long for Changewing to return.

Now that my original anger has subsided, I feel remorseful about what I said. My only friend in this world just got pushed away because of my temper and impulsive action. I want to have somebody to talk to, someone to share my worries, hopes and dreams with. Somebody to care for me.

Without Changewing, I feel very alone in this dark world.

**H**

I gulp as we approach my home. Although, since Toothless has been gone, it has seemed to me more like an empty and deserted shell, waiting to be inhabited once more. Dragging my feet every step of the way up the foreboding steps, only hurried along by a sharp nudge in the back from Astrid.

"Hiccup, this is all for the best. You have to understand that. Your father just wants what is best for you." Her words, said with tact and care, make no impression on me; my mind is numb with the fact that when Toothless and I have just found one another again, he may once more be cruelly snatched from my grasp.

I finally make it to the heavy oaken door, and push it open timidly. Peeking an eye round the corner, I see my father standing, hands on hips in his customary pose, in front of the fire. As I push the door open farther, it starts to creak, and my father finally notices my entrance.

"Hiccup," he says warmly, his thick Scottish accent which, thankfully, appears to have bypassed my generation filling the room with a rich tone. "Sit down, son."

I do not share his warmth. Instead of sitting in the chair closest to the fire, I choose the one in the darkest and coldest corner. Toothless is suffering right now, and it's all because of me. I must suffer as he does.

"Hiccup," my father says again, and tears threaten to worm their way out from underneath my lids and down my cheeks. "You need to decide what to do with Toothless. You can't keep him if he keeps trying to attack you every time you come close."

"He doesn't know me anymore, dad. Just give me some time. I know I can get back to him."

"What if you can't? You have to understand, Hiccup, that the future may be that he _won't_ ever remember you. You need to prepare yourself, and learn to accept it."

His words are said with the kindest intentions, but all I see is distrust and cruelty.

"No! You can't just give up on him like this! On… us," I burst out, the tears starting to flow. I make no effort to wipe them away or to stop them; these tears are for Toothless, and he is absolutely deserving of them.

"Just… give me time. I think… no, I know, that he's in there somewhere. You just need to give him a chance."

My father takes my outburst in his stride, and continues talking as if I hadn't just lost it in front of him. It makes me think that he has spent time preparing this speech, and will discharge his duty whatever happens.

"Yes, but if he doesn't remember you, what are you going to do with him? We need to consider all the possibilities. We can't just throw out some because they are unkind to Toothless or unfair on you. I know that you will probably never have considered this, but if Toothless doesn't remember, and he wants to keep terrorising the village, there is only really one option left." The power of the words that he has been careful not to let pass his lips hits me like a lightning strike.

Incensed, I throw myself to my feet. "NO! You can't kill him! I'll make you see! I'm going to bring him back to me! And if you want to kill him, you'll have to kill me first. I can't let him… let him…" my voice cracks, and I cannot complete my sentence because my anger has now left me; in its place a heap of shuddering sobs. I take some faltering steps towards the door as fast as I can, narrowly avoiding the heavy table in my path. Out of the corner of my eye I see a blurry blue figure, and realise that Astrid has heard everything.

It is no longer just between me and Toothless. It's a battle to get everybody to see the dragon that once was again. To stop them being blind to the fact that he's still in there, and the front he's putting on right now is just an act, because he doesn't know any better.

I slam the door behind me, and start to run, wanting to escape that terrible atmosphere as quickly as possible. My legs, on autopilot, take me towards the one thing I value most in this life.

Toothless.

I approach the arena, and see him sitting there placidly, gazing off at some point in the far distance. My footsteps slow, and eventually I creep quietly closer, not wanting to disturb his peace and turn him back into the vicious dragon he shows me now. I don't want to be standing out here whilst Toothless is incarcerated like this. But I don't want to be back in the house either.

The only place I want to be right now is Toothless' back. But I know I cannot be there.

Yet.

* * *

**A/N I seriously have no idea what is coming next. LesserWraith, it's all up to you.**


	13. Faith

**This is LesserWraith's chapter. Enjoy! **

* * *

**T**

It's that boy again! When will he get that I don't care about him in the slightest? He can come up to me all he wants, but he's never going to get any sympathy from me. I will tell you once, I will tell you twice, and on the third time, you will still hear the same thing: I hate him. Why must he torment me with his presence? If I'm going to rot here, I might as well rot alone. I don't want to live caged like an animal here. It's unfair and unjust.

I need Changewing by my side. He'd know what it's like to be deprived of everything. But I just lost him, and it's not like dragons are forgiving creatures.

The main point is, the only thing that finds me worthy of caring is the thing that I want to eat the most. Which is just terrible. Do you love who you love, or love those who love you? If I could choose, I would pick one that fit both categories, but definitely not the latter. I care not for those who love me, if it's what that boy feels towards me. I cannot think of it as anything more than pet love, though. Those little, miserable creatures that follow their masters unconditionally without second thoughts. Dragons aren't like that. We're dragons, not pets. We fight for our position in this world, and where we are does not lie under the tendons of humans.

The boy is joined by another human, a flyaway girl in blue and blonde. They speak of something I do not know of, but I lean in to listen anyway, despite my grudge towards the boy.

"He can't do that, right?" the sitting boy asks the standing girl.

"He's very capable of it," she says grimly. "There's no denying the truth."

"We've got to stop him," he says determinedly. "They just can't… do it."

"I know," she says gently. "And I'm going to help you."

"You will?" He watches in shock as the girl holds out her hand.

"I will," she nods. "You would have done the same for Stormfly."

To my shock, an arrow comes whizzing my way right after the two brats finish their talking. The girl pulls the boy out of the way immediately, but the arrow was not meant to be theirs.

I roar in anger as the arrow flies through the cage and right into the wall- an insult to just more than my weakness now. Not only can I be shot like an animal at any time, the arrow can fly through the cage as it wants, but I cannot. I turn around and blast the arrow out from the wall, the blasting gases of rage that ignites my fire passed onto the wooden arrow, incinerating it immediately and leaving nothing more than a trailed smudge of ash on the ground.

"Oi!" An older voice calls out. "Keep it quiet in there. Those iron bars took forever to smelt."

"Gobber!" the young boy says, turning around in anger. "You could've hurt him!"

"You kids get out of there," the man at the entrance says, causing me to turn around once again. "This arena is now on lockdown."

"The arena is on _what?!_" the girl asks, pulling the now-slumped male body up in rage. "You think you can just come in here and order whatever goddamn lockdown you want?!"

"Yes, I can," he says grimly. "I got the orders from Stoick. His village, his rules."

"You're an idiot!" the young boy yells, getting up next to the girl in rage. "I trusted you all my life!"

"Hey, it's not like I wanted to do this!" the one-legged man snaps. "I'm just doing what I'm told. Tell you what; if you want to plan something out, do it outside, alright? Inside here is where Stoick doesn't want you to be in."

Stoick? The old man that locked me in here? He's ordering the boy out as well? Humans abuse their power so much. But yet, he's doing me a favour this way. At least the stupid boy is out of my sight now.

"Oh, and this might be a bad time to say it, but none of the other dragons are locked up," the man adds as the two brats walk out the arena. "Stoick seems to be crazy about your dragon."

"He's not mine," I hear the boy say, and I growl in agreement. Maybe he doesn't want to domesticize me after all. The only other possibility for me would be me dying, but a nagging thought keeps me from considering this much.

_Other dragons?_

Oh, well. At least not I'm completely alone here. But where are they?

**H**

"None of this is going right!" Astrid yells frustratedly, throwing her axe into the ground angrily. "None!"

"It isn't," I agree, holding my knees close up to my head as I slowly let all my emotions out through carefully controlled breathing. It's something that I've been trying for a while, and it's working really well. Supposed if I was going to be depressed, I could snap out of it with a few carefully controlled minutes of breathing.

Unfortunately, that's only what I'm _supposed_ to be doing. I'm hyperventilating as well.

"Would you stop acting like you're going to die or something!" she yells, picking up the axe and lodging it on the tree trunk right over my head. The initial shock is enough for me to snap back to my senses.

"I don't think I'm going to die," I say, carefully disengaging the axe from its target. "But Toothless will, if we don't come up with something soon."

"Dammit!" Astrid yells, watching the distance as the dragons of the villagers are being herded around one by one, without their rider's consent. Why am I even using that word? Are dragons something that were born only for us to ride them on their backs? That's not true at all. If it was, I wouldn't have made such a deep bond with Toothless… and with it, a huge scar in his absence.

"Reminds me of when Stormfly was caged up," I sigh, watching as a Nadder follows a villager holding a piece of meat around. How do dragons follow the trail of these scents so easily? Is it like humans and love, then, that we follow so blindly into our possible deaths?

"I got her to leave the island as soon as I heard the news," she explains, and to that I admire her swiftness. "She didn't take the news really lightly."

"So we're stuck here," I say. "Without a clue."

"Oh, yes, we do," a voice behind me calls. "Or was it… do without a clue?"

"It was with a not with a clue," a female voice jeers, the twins appearing behinds us. "Was it?"

"Shut up, both of you," Fishlegs says, and Snotlout jumps down from the tree to join us.

"Hey, we heard that Berk is now in Operation Night Fury Lockdown and Execution," Snotlout says, greeting us with those words. "What do we do?"

"We fight!" Ruffnut says, smacking hard onto Tuffnut's head.

"We blow them up!" Tuffnut says, shoving her into the tree.

"We sneak out at night and free him," Astrid says, her hands crossed. "Then we get the hell out of there."

"We make a proper plan," Fishlegs says, rolling his eyes. "What do you say, Hiccup?"

I look up at all of them as they look at me expectantly. I feel a deep, deep, pang of hate for myself as I am unable to bring myself up with an articulate plan for all of them.

I couldn't save Toothless once. How am I going to save him again? I can't. I'll just get everyone in even more trouble. I really don't know what to do anymore. I might even bring an even more horrible fate for Toothless...

"I can't do it, guys," I say resignedly, getting up slowly and facing them all. "I'm sorry."

"You- wh- WHAT?!" Astrid splutters, grabbing my tunic forcefully as I make to leave. "You can't just call it quits!"

"I just can't do it anymore," I say. "There's nothing I'm capable of."

"Who do you think brought us all here together, anyway?" Fishlegs frowns, rounding my side. "If not you and _your_ problem?"

"You always have a plan," Snotlout says, leaning against the tree indifferently. "Your call."

"Yeah, and we always have the best suggestions," Ruffnut adds, flexing her arms intimidatingly. "Fire away."

"Yeah, dude, you can't go solo on _this_ one," Tuffnut says, folding his arms. "You need us. Or was it... we need you... hmm."

"Think about it," Astrid says, walking closer to me. "We're all waiting for you."

I look at all of them, and their willing faces, and their fierce Viking determination, and their misfortune to all be with me. All of them don't need to be here, but all of them are. And they're all here for me.

And finally, I nod. A plan comes into my mind, and sure as hell it needs more than just me to pull off.

"Alright. Let's get going," I say.

* * *

**L/N: Every fire... starts with a spark! And yes, I'm a fan of the Hunger Games.**


	14. Toothless

**This is Absi B's chapter. Enjoy!**

* * *

**H**

"Right, do you guys all know what you're doing?" I ask this question mainly directed at the twins, because they have 10 second memories and are terrible at following orders.

"Uh… yeah! Of course," Ruffnut replies confidently.

"Hang on a minute. We do?" Tuffnut questions, which earns him a bludgeon on the head from his sibling.

I sigh. "Okay, I think we need to run this through again. Ruff, Tuff, you're going to create the distraction. Go to the Great Hall, blow something up. Astrid, you take care of my father's dragon. Make sure he can't be found during the chaos. Snotlout, Fishlegs, you let your dragons go crazy. Feed them all the chicken they can eat, and then let them loose on the village. It's not going to be pretty, but it's going to take something like this to get my dad's attention drawn away from the arena for long enough." The small band of teen Vikings nod their heads in agreement.

I can feel a tiny seed of hope germinating within my body and beginning to shoot. Things are finally looking up. When I thought that all hope had been lost, that I would never see my friend again, Toothless returned, and with him, my hope. The flame within me that had burned bright from my anger and sadness now burns passionately with _hope._

Astrid takes a tentative step towards me, reaching out her hand.

"Come on guys, let's go get ready," Snotlout said, the first thoughtful thing I've ever heard him say. The twins, Snotlout, and Fishlegs all turned on their heels and sprinted off into the darkening forest. Dusk was just falling; this was the perfect time to get Toothless out of his prison.

As I watch them go, I feel a soft hand land on my neck.

"Hiccup," Astrid says tenderly. "I think… I think I should come with you. To get Toothless. In case… you know…" My brain filled in the rest of her words automatically, suddenly filling me with anger.

"In case what?" I snap. "In case he attacks me? In case I get hurt, or worse, _killed_? What does that matter to _you_? Do you think I can't defend myself from him? Do you not trust me? _Tell me!_" The final words turn into a shout as I round on her, my eyes fierce and full of fury.

Astrid steps back, shock and betrayal on her face. But she doesn't run away or turn her head away. She stands there and stares right back.

Eventually, after what feels like an eternity, I lower my eyes. With Toothless, my easy lucidity had left me, leaving me a short-tempered wreck of a human, barely able to bring a spoon to his lips or lay his head on a pillow for sleep. Now, with his return, I am struggling to find who I once was again.

It seems that I, too, need to rediscover my true self.

"I'm sorry, Astrid," I start to say, but she puts her hands on my shoulders and forces me to make eye contact once again.

"Sorry for what? Getting angry at me? I know this is a hard time for you. I can see the ways you've changed since Toothless left. I can see how the calm boy I once knew is almost gone. But now, it's time to bring him back. You can't just look after Toothless and neglect yourself all the time; look what that's turned you into."

I can see the truth in her words. I know them to be true; there's no point in denying it.

"Okay, but I'm still sorry." Seeing her eyes glaring at me, I quickly add, "but, not about yelling at you. I meant, sorry, but I don't want… I don't want you to be there when… I want to be alone… then." I'm shaking and hurt, but Astrid sees this and wraps me in a tight embrace.

"It's okay, Hiccup. I understand," Astrid replies, hugging me back fiercely. Her thin but muscled arms can wrap all the way around my scrawny body and meet at my back, and it's almost like she's clinging onto me for support as much as I am hugging her for comfort. I can feel her scratchy blue striped tunic on my cheek, and a spine from her shoulder pads is digging into my neck. Despite this discomfort, I am glad that I have someone to hold me right now.

Unlike Toothless. He can only sit, alone and uncared for, in that prison, waiting for his death. Exacted upon him by the man who once saved him from death by drowning. By the man who once valued his life as much as he did his son's, for he saw what difference Toothless made to his son's life.

Why can't he see Toothless as he once did anymore? Why can't he see that Toothless is still making a huge difference to my life, even though he cannot remember me; it is the fact that I can see him alive that keeps me living day to day. And my father, my _father,_ the man who's meant to _love _and _care for _and _protect _me, is going to take it all away.

He might as well be cutting my heart out.

If Toothless dies, my life is worth nothing to anybody anymore. And I can't live with that. I would need to end my suffering, so I can spend the rest of my days with him wherever it is that souls end up when the body they inhabited gives up the fight for life.

I'd always thought that I'd be the first of us to die. The lucky one. I wouldn't have to bear life without one half of my body; one half of my soul. I thought that Toothless would have had to bear that agony alone, while my puny body that has been no good to me rots away, forgotten by everyone but him, in the dirt under his feet.

Now, I'm… I'm not sure anymore.

When I open my eyes again, I see the sky is rapidly darkening. Pushing myself away from Astrid, I realise her eyes are red and moist. My eyes must have widened in shock or something, because Astrid says, "I know, I can't really be crying right now, but… I don't know. I guess I've just realised how much he means to you, for you to do all this for Toothless… even I don't know whether I'd do all this for Stormfly, and she's one of the best friends I've ever had. Sometimes you just can't explain your emotions. This is one of those times," she finishes, her teary gaze locking with mine. I gently reach up and dry her eyes, and she bows her head shyly and mutters a thanks.

"We've got to do this. Now," I say, my sadness temporarily forgotten. I can't afford to break down at this critical moment. If I do, Toothless could be condemned to the axe. I can't let that happen.

Ever.

Astrid picks up her axe, sniffing slightly, and walks off to go and hide my father's Thunderdrum. I remain in the forest, collecting my thoughts for a moment. I've got a few extra minutes to myself, because I need to wait for the twins to distract my father fully before I make my move. Unsurprisingly, my thoughts turn to Toothless.

I think about his black scales, his eyes every shade of green imaginable. I think about his big pink tongue, and the dazzling white teeth he shows when he's angry. I think about the electric blue plasma blasts he sends out, exploding in white hot fireballs.

I put all of these physical aspects together, and imagine his powerful, sleek body cutting through the sky and blasting the clouds to oblivion. I can imagine his playful nature when he fools around with a Terror, and his contented expression just after he's eaten a meal. But… there's something wrong with the pictures.

I'm not in any of them.

It's like even _I _have forgotten about the memories we've shared. How am I meant to give Toothless his memories back, when I am struggling to keep hold of my own?

Maybe I'm just imagining his life after I'm gone. His happy life, where he can go where he wants and do what he likes without being impeded by me. I'm just a distant memory to him now. Just another meaningless person he happened to come across in his hundred- years- long life.

But a distant memory is better than no memory at all.

I _have _to get him back. If only for him to forget me when I die.

As I think these thoughts, I hear an explosion in the direction of the Great Hall. It's almost time for me to make my entrance. I steel myself, get myself mentally ready for what's about to happen.

"_For Toothless_!"I cry out to the trees, and I sprint fearlessly towards my best friend.

**T**

I'm sitting in the stone and metal circle that has become my unwanted home for the past few days. And… I've been wondering this for a while now. What is this stone arena for?

I've seen people leading round our kind, so I know it can't be used for imprisoning them. But every time I see a dragon willingly follow a human like that, I feel slightly deader inside, because I know that they are being denied the chance of freedom. The chance to fly when and where they choose, looping crazily through the sky, discovering new lands and creating new friendships; maybe even finding a mate and starting a family.

So… if it's not used for imprisonment, what _is _it used for? Shuffling around the arena, looking for any clues as to its previous use, I can see the heavy steel- framed doors sealed shut with logs, and the occasional burn mark. There's one on the wall, quite low down. It looks almost like a... Gronkle's…

But that can't be right. From what I've seen, the humans keep the dragons as pets, not prisoners. I don't know what to think any more. I just want to have my wings free to carry me through the skies once more; I want my deadly flame and piercing cry back, to establish my dominance over other species; I want my feet back, so that I can claw any wrongdoer and run faster than the wind across the soft green grass.

I just want to be free again.

In the distance, I hear a faint explosion. What can be going on? Maybe there's a dragon rebellion, defying their owners, I think. I make what noises I can, and hope they are loud enough for the other dragons to hear. I want to join the fight. Even though I have no human owner to go against, if the other dragons had me on their side, we would be unstoppable. No human could stand in our way. We could rule the Isle.

I raise my head and look keenly around me for any sign that the other dragons have heard me. But I see no dragons; nobody has heard my cries; nobody is coming to set me free.

I am still alone.

**H**

Even though my legs are weak, I have found new strength in my hope. My hope that soon I will have the dragon I love and value above any other back. Back to who he was before. I pound the ground, making my way to the edge of the thicket where I am concealed. When I reach the treeline, I stop and crouch down, scanning the area for any signs of my father or Gobber. When I see none, I silently creep forwards, always on the lookout for any villager likely to side with my father in an argument. Which basically means that I am avoiding any human I see.

I have now become an enemy to my own kin; I have no species to belong to any longer. My father sees me as an insane, lovesick boy who can't think straight anymore. But he can't see that the only thing that will make me think straight again is Toothless, alive, and remembering my face once more.

The arena is, unfortunately, on the far side of the village, next to the cliffs. I'm going to have to make it past the Great Hall without my father seeing me; I know that if he sees me heading in that direction I will be stopped for sure.

So, the journey towards Toothless is painfully slow. I know that the slower I go, the more chance there is of somebody spotting me, but if I go fast, I'm also likely to be stopped and asked why. But the journey away from the arena should be much faster, as long as I can get Toothless to trust me.

If he ever remembers me again, the first step he must take is to trust me with something important. I have to convince him to leave with me tonight, and get him away from here so he can escape the terrible fate that awaits him if he stays. I don't know how I can get him to trust me anymore, though. It used to be that I could just utter those two words, and he would never doubt me and never leave my side. Now, I don't know whether I can get him to trust me.

I just hope that Ruff and Tuff have kept their distraction _inside _the Great Hall.

As I near the Hall, I can smell the acrid stench of a Zippleback's fire, and I can see people running hither and thither carrying buckets of water. I can hear my father's great voice bellowing out commands to his tribe members, and I can just about make out the sounds of the twins trying to bring their dragon under control again.

It's all an act, of course. At least, it's meant to be. With the pair of them, you never know when they're acting, or when it's real.

I try and stay within the deep shadows cast by the tall statues and lamps that are scattered about the village, but every now and then I have to run out into the open and dash across a clear space. Every time I do, I think of Toothless, and how I cannot fail in my task, otherwise the others' efforts would have been for nothing.

I can't let any of them down.

Thankfully the twins are adept at creating chaos, and I come across only a single villager on my way to the arena, but I manage to evade him with ease. He's not paying much attention to anything other than the smoke billowing from the Great Hall, and the people running around like headless chickens nearby. Now I'm only a few minutes' walk from the arena, and with each step I take I know I am one metre closer to a new life with my best friend.

Now my steps are fast and erratic once more. I want to have as much time with Toothless as possible- create as many memories as I can with him. _For_ him.

As I quickly dart towards the steel prison housing Toothless, my mind fills once more of all his placid expressions and looks of care and recognition he gave me. If I can just find one of those emotions in him tonight, I can liberate him.

Approaching the arena, I can make out the dark shape of Toothless lying motionless on the cold stone floor. His mouth has also been bound, so he is unable to make fire even to just warm his cold scales. An almost overwhelming urge to call out his name is brutally suppressed by my brain; any loud noise now could alert my father.

My inner flame burns bright now, full of hope. Hope that my father won't realise what's really going on. Hope that I'll be able to liberate Toothless. Hope that he will trust me again for the first time. My legs are carrying me unconsciously towards him now; my mind is too deep in thoughts to put any input into this motion. I'm in the middle of my nostalgia tour when I finally make it to the heavy gate that separates me from him, the first door we must pass through on the path to his remembrance. Toothless senses my presence and raises his head, his eyes narrowing to slits as he sees my form standing before him.

I would give so much just to see that placid look one more time.

**T**

It's that _boy _again. He just keeps on coming back. I didn't call for any humans, yet this one always wants to be here. It's like he's mocking me, standing outside my cage and silently laughing at how he is free and I am not. Laughing inside, at how he, the _weak, puny boy_, can be outside and free, and how I, the most powerful of the dragons, can be stuck in a cage with no way to escape.

Each time I see him, my deep hatred of him is dug even deeper into my soul.

He walks closer to the gate, and starts saying something to me. I shuffle closer to make his words more distinct over the commotion outside.

"Toothless. That's it, just a little bit closer. Come here, bud." Bud? Toothless? What are these names he keeps on calling me? I am known only as Night Fury. Dragons do not have given names. We are all just named for our species- a Gronckle is a Gronckle, a Nadder is a Nadder. No names, no discrimination. No way for the runt of the young to be named as such.

"Right, you've got to stay quiet, okay?" His words seem more like a question than a command, but there is no way I am going to obey them. I roar as loudly as my bound mouth allows me to, for as long as I have breath left in my lungs to do so. If nothing heard that, then surely everyone must be deaf.

"Toothless! Sshh!" he hisses through his teeth, his brow furrowing and his expression saddening. Then I see him almost visibly pulling himself together, and turning his eyes to meet mine once more.

"I'm trying to help you. You just have to…trust me," he finishes, and I am intrigued. Why would this boy have such an interest in helping me? I mean nothing to him. I am just another dragon, just another_creature _to be domesticized and kept as a pet.

My curiosity piqued, I awkwardly shuffle myself even closer to the gate. I see the boy stretching out his hand to me, whispering something to himself. His pale, bony fingers would, unfortunately, not provide much sustenance, but if he opens the gate, he is mine for the taking. I can't believe he is going to make the same mistake twice. I feel as if my fortune is finally turning.

"Just hang on a moment, Toothless. I'm going to get you out of here. But you have to trust me. Please don't kill me. If you do, you'll be dead for sure. Please, just trust me." His pleading words seem entirely true, but I still yearn to take revenge on the boy who shot me down. Surely he can just let me out, I can kill him, and then fly away and start to live my life again?

But… he still insists on calling me Toothless, and I want to know why. So my brain concludes that the boy must live, until I satisfy my curiosity.

Although as soon as I find out, he _will_ become my next meal.

**H**

As Toothless shuffles closer to my hand, I can see it start to tremble. I'm _scared _of my best friend. When he gets close enough to touch, I can bear it no longer. I have to feel his scales once more. My arm extends to its fullest, and I brush the tips of my fingers lightly against his snout. Toothless reels back with the contact, anger the only emotion etched onto his face. But my hand is alive with electricity.

I can feel the bond we shared beginning to forge itself once more. That barest whisper of my fingers on his scales, and I feel alive again. It's almost like since Toothless has been gone, I've been living a shadow life, a half- life, and his coming back has restored me to my full state once more. He _is _my reason for living. _Toothless_ is the reason I've stayed alive, not the beating of my heart in my chest. The thought of Toothless is the thing that drives my heart to keep beating, and I know that it will stay strong as long as he is always there in the world for me.

That's why I can't let him die. Why I couldn't let him die that day. Because eventually the thought of Toothless would be gone, and my heart would see no reason to continue beating anymore. I'd just waste away and die, the last vestiges of Toothless slipping through my memories like sand trickles through fingers.

Any Toothless, whether he remembers me or not, is better than no Toothless at all.

Filled with zeal, I run over to the lever that controls the gate, and begin to haul it down, ratcheting the gate up one notch. It's a pretty tough gate to lift, but the other Vikings can throw it up like it weighs nothing at all. But, due to my small size, I've always had to do it the hard way, and it takes me a good few minutes each time I do.

But this time, I only need it to be raised a few notches. Enough for me to crawl under and Toothless to squirm under. The fact that he's one of the smallest dragons that can be ridden is an advantage here. Four more notches are what separate Toothless and I from freedom.

I give another mighty heave on the lever, and force it down once again, raising the gate another notch. Three left to go.

I hear the pounding of heavy footsteps, and I know that my time is running out. Summoning all my strength, I pull down the lever twice more in quick succession. Only one left, and that is completed quickly as I hear my father's voice yelling, growing ever louder as he gets ever nearer. So he did hear Toothless' cry after all. I thought I might have gotten away with that. Damn.

I scramble under the gate, and run up to Toothless' side. I quickly survey the knots and bindings that are keeping him prisoner here, and I see that Gobber has used some very complicated knots to keep him here. My nimble fingers are swift, but I only manage to undo one of the knots before I see a brown shaft bearing down on my neck. My quick reactions are the only things that save me from becoming a lifeless corpse on the floor.

"STOP!" my father yells at me. I glance up, and see the bow in my father's hands. I never even knew he owned one. But… _he_ was the one that shot at me! My own _father_!

My heart fills up with hurt and betrayal, and I turn back to the ropes tying Toothless down. My father sees this, and throws up the gate effortlessly. I rush to try and free Toothless' head, so he can blast him away, but I reach the last knot only to find myself being forcibly yanked from his side and thrown roughly to the floor. I try to scramble to my feet, but a colossal hand forces its way around my neck and shoves me up against the stone wall.

My breathing becomes rapid and I struggle to form coherent thoughts or words.

"Dad! No… Please… he… he… was going to trust… trust me. Please, let me… let him go!" At the final shout, I grab his hand and try and force my way out of this, but his grip is like iron. His fist encircles my narrow neck, and he carries me in this manner out of the arena. He uses his other hand to pull down the gate, shutting me off from the one being that's ever been unconditionally kind to me. He dumps me down unceremoniously on the floor, and I scrabble for purchase on the ground, trying to pull myself closer to the gate. Closer to Toothless.

The tears that had threatened to break free earlier are now flowing in full force, and I feel like everything is going wrong for me, when I thought it was all going so well.

"Hiccup." I ignore my name, no longer wanting to listen to the man who tried to end my life. I want to disown him. He is no father to me. Not any more.

"_Hiccup._" This time his tone is harsh and forceful, and a coarse hand accompanies its calling, turning my head to face his. I stare deeply into his eyes, willing him with every fibre of my being not to utter the words I know are coming.

"He dies. Today."

* * *

**A/N: This is actually the longest chapter I've ever written. I hope you enjoyed it!**


	15. Maybe

**This is LesserWraith's chapter. Prepare for some OOCness... and a bit more!**

* * *

**T**

I knew it.

I knew that humans couldn't be trusted. Like guilt, you don't feel the thoughts of consequences when you aren't actually be in the thing yourself. Now, with the events replaying themselves fresh in my mind, I have once again learned my lesson.

Don't trust humans.

Why did I ever consider letting that boy try and free me, only to have my hope of freedom taken away, whisked away before my very eyes? He's toying with me, of course. He wants to tease me into that wings can once again spread into the sky, but chip them off at the very last moment. It's certainly all an act.

To hell with Toothless. I am Night Fury, not a dragon that can be so lowly named. Especially by foolish animals that cannot be trusted.

Out here, I can see more of the 'arena' now. There are knives, swords, those human claws, that we have been taught to stay away from, scattered around the place, littering the sides of the walls as the area above is laced together with ropes that prevent anything from escape, as well as the walls and the doors themselves.

This isn't an 'arena'. This is an 'execution ground'.

This is where I am going to die.

I flail angrily at the ropes, but there are still so many around my body that I cannot open my wings, let alone even open my mouth. The only thing that I can do is move my legs…

I've got it. I'm going to cut myself free. It shouldn't be that hard, right?

I position myself next to the wall and vigorously rub my side with the wall, hoping the friction will cause the binding ropes to there cut open.

I don't even need to move my legs as I attempt to free myself with this technique; I just need to shift back and forth, focusing on one rope as it forcefully rubs against the wall.

_Work, dammit,_ I growl to myself. _Just work already._

As the rope rubs back and forth, it gets hotter, and thinner as well as its smaller strands finally begin to break free from the friction. Oh, if only I could shoot fire right now! I could scorch all these ropes…

A rope near my stomach (where the rubbing is the easiest) breaks free at last.

_Off with you,_ I mutter, kicking the rope away in disgust. _Now, the next one…_

**H**

"Dad!" I yell, fighting the tears as I get up from my grounded position. I scramble towards the door vigorously, but my puny body is effortlessly shoved back onto the ground by my father, who makes his way towards my front, his face contorted in rage.

"What is with you and that dragon?" he asks, his hands shaking in anger. "You've disappointed me very, very, much."

"So have you, dad!" I yell, my tone strong, determined- and broken in fury. This has never happened before; me lashing out at my father, the man who cared for me the most, who was there when I needed him, who was there when I didn't.

But it doesn't matter now. If he wants to hurt Toothless, he's going to have to take a piece of me as well.

"I know, _Hiccup,_" he asks angrily, gripping my shoulder with one hand and uncaringly levitates me above the ground. "You must be angry at the man who's doing the best he can for you."

"You're not doing anything right, dad!" I yell, my spit landing on his face as I yell at him relentlessly. "You're not going to gain anything by killing Toothless!"

"Of course I won't," he says with a sarcastic smile. I curse myself, knowing that I too bear that smile. "I'll be losing a perfectly rogue dragon that cannot be controlled."

"You're mad!" I scream in his face. "How come you don't kill Thunderdrum off while you're at it?"

My father's eyes suddenly slit, his breathing getting harder and harder.

"_He_ is tamaeble," he breathes, pulling my body close to his as he etches out every syllable with fury. "He is nothing more but a dragon who submits to my will. All the dragons here are. Except for yours, and he. Will. Die."

He drops me to the ground, turning away even before I hit the rock below. My legs hit the rock, the joints buckling heavily at the sudden movements. I lose balance, my hands finding the ground behind me as I push myself back up hastily, my eyes flaring with anger and frustration.

"He's going now, in fact," my father says, beginning to walk towards the arena. "The faster this thing is over, the faster I can get back to work."

Out of his pocket, he slides out a dagger- the same dagger that I had used to cut Toothless free. Twirling it in his hands, he makes his way towards the arena.

My eyes widen in fear, white thoughts gripping me as I lose control of my actions. Gathering all the energy that I have left, I run up to him, wildly slamming right into his gigantic body- and bounce right back as my father's daggerless hand knocks me towards the ground.

He didn't even turn his head my way.

"You're not- you're not going to hurt him!" I yell, but with what energy I have left does not suffice to sustain my fire-filled actions, and I can only pant in pain as my father continues to walk towards the place that will soon be renamed Toothless's Grave.

My father's walks are cut short, though, as a lethal blast of fire passes right in front of his body, causing him to jump back in defense, his arms spread out as an axe finds its way into his other hand.

"What-" he begins.

"That's not what a chief does, old man!" Tuffnut yells, the Zippleback flying from the side and hissing out another volley of gas, causing my father to jump back away even further back.

"Yeah, chiefs certainly don't treat their sons like punching dolls," Ruffnut yells, the Zippleback unleashing the fire blast, the fire singeing his clothes slightly this time. "Only twins can do that."

"Tuffnut, Ruffnut, get down here at once," he yells, dousing the fire on his tunic with a quick clamp of his hand. "We're going to discuss-"

"No time for that, chief!" Snotlout yells, the Nightmare flying at my father at massive speed, taking him by surprise, knocking him to the ground and quickly taking off again. Hookfang lands in front of my father, standing in between him and the arena with the twins, who have joined his side. Watching in astonishment, I slowly push myself up from the ground quietly.

"Please take Hiccup's words into consideration, chief," Fishlegs slowly flutters into view from behind a house. "It's very logical that a dragon can lose their memories. If we just gave Hiccup time to make Toothless remember him-"

"Dragons do not know of such foolish things!" my father roars, causing Fishlegs to nearly fall off the Gronckle in fright. "They know of only how to follow us. Even Hiccup said it before: 'It's in their instincts to protect us.' That's what you do here on Berk. Train them to follow us. If they don't, they are not welcome here."

"Then let him go!" Fishlegs bellows back. I feel a rush of gratitude as I stealthily make my way towards the arena, with its gate closed and locked. "Why must you kill him?"

"That Night Fury terrorizes Berk by instinct," I hear my father say. "It's been here before and it has come again, when it has lost its mind. It knows only of killing. It is a dragon that cannot be tamed."

"He saved your life!" Snotlout yells, even him understanding the injustice among us. "He killed that monster! What part of 'loyalty' do you not understand?"

"It tried to kill my son," my father says flatly, spinning the axe in his hands. "Even he knows that-" he turns around to where I was several minutes ago- "Right?"

When he does not see me behind him, I make a break for the arena door.

"HICCUP!" my father bellows, but I'm already behind Hookfang and running as fast as I can for the place where things will change. Things _will_ change. "GET RIGHT BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!" I hear the clanking of metal on metal as my father makes his way towards the arena-

"Nuh-uh," I hear Tuffnut say, the Zippleback unleashing another torrent of fire. "You're not getting anywhere past here."

I shove at the metal gears, trying to force up to open. While it does not, it does move a little bit. Inside, I can hear a scratching sound… scratching?

"Yeah," Ruffnut says, and I can feel her smirk as she taunts my father's advance. "He's head of the Dragon Training Academy. He knows what he's doing. _You don't._"

I pick up a nearby rock, banging it at the metal latch that prevents my movement. Powerful vikings can move it off easily, but being the Hiccup I am, my attempts are futile.

But not fruitless. The metal moves up more and more with every clang of metal on metal.

"I hate to admit it," Fishlegs says, giving Meatlug a rock and making her blast it at my advancing father, "But they're right. You don't know half as much about dragons as Hiccup does."

The metal finally comes loose, my senses coming back into overdrive as I dash in towards the circular arena. I'm shocked to see Toothless, already half free of ropes, scratching away the rest of the ropes on the wall. When he sees me, he gives me a loud snarl, doubling his efforts to free himself of the ropes. From the way I see it, it's going to be impossible for him to get the mouth ropes off in time- that requires a lot of movement and just not enough time.

"Toothless, you can do whatever you want to me later," I plead desperately, grabbing a knife from the weapon selections along the wall. "Just let me cut these ropes off you."

As I approach him, he notices the knife and rears back in anger, dashing straight towards me. Even a silenced dragon can trample you to death with their powerful feet, something that I had learned from Fishlegs.

I'm tackled to the ground, my body colliding with the cold ground. The knife skids away from my reach, and I look up to see his angry eyes giving me a death warning. _Don't move._

"Toothless…" I plead, trying to get up, but his massive paw holds me down as he rubs the ropes along the wall even faster.

"They're going to kill you, Toothless!" I yell, my hands inching towards the knife desperately. "They're going to kill you and there's nothing you can do if you don't- let- me- free you!"

My hands finally reach the knife, and from there I quickly shred each belt, each rope, each binding around his body with urgent slashes, but I cannot reach his head, which has stopped rubbing the wall in curiosity.

**T**

What is this stupid boy doing? Why is he cutting me free this time? Is this another ploy of his?

I back away from the wall, watching with angry eyes as the boy discards the knife and looks at me in surrender.

"I think you can open your wings now," he says with a frightened voice.

True to his words, my wings finally unfurl from their long-locked position. Their membranes spread wide and long, the wings of the Night Fury shining under the fiery sun whose fire matches only mine.

I am nearly free. However, the ropes that bind the ceiling above cannot be blasted through without fire or teeth, both which I cannot use at the moment. I snarl at the boy, the boy who has once again taunted me of my lack of freedom.

_What do you want from me?_ I growl angrily. _Why are you torturing me like this?_

To my shock, he answers exactly what I'm thinking- as if he _knew_ what I was thinking.

"I don't want anything from you," he says shakily. "I just want you to be free, alright? I'm not like them-" he jerks his head towards the arena door, where I can feel another presence coming in, "-you've got to hear me out. Alright?"

Against my will, I silence my growl and reluctantly listen to him.

"The belt that binds your mouth is impossible to scratch open. My father made sure of that."

I growl in anger, but quickly stop to hear the boy's next words.

"The only way to get rid of it is by unlocking it… by human hand," he says feebly.

I rear back in distrust. Unlocked? By human hand? This is absurd. There is no way anything like that is going to happen.

"Just trust me, this once," he says, desperation on his face, but with it determination and the human form of inexhaustible fire, hope. "Night Fury."

Sensing these words, my growls lessen, my mind allows another consideration of the boy into my mind. He did not call me by the names that he called me before, but the name that I was given of my own accord. He is arguing on my terms. Finally, I lower my snout down and let out a small croon, a croon mixed with a growl and a snarl, but all the while still a croon.

The boy moves closer and closer, and I try very hard to stay very still as he does this. I tell myself to not jerk back, to not defend myself, for he has already rid himself of every weapon possible, except for those human nails, which are nothing against the thick scales of a dragon.

"HICCUP!" a giant voice yells, and a take a small leap back as a giant man, scorched, ripped, and toiled with sweat, runs towards me in fury. The little boy runs after me, and leaps forward, his hands landing on my snout, holding me shut in an attempt to capture me for his father. I roar angrily, but quickly stop as my mouth suddenly comes free, but not for long as the man crashes down onto my mouth, holding me again in place, shoving the boy aside as he skids onto the floor, a small line of blood forming along his good ankle where his injured body comes to a stop. I see him struggle a few times, but my sight is blocked by something much like a human hand.

Funny… it felt like the boy really _did_ want to free me. He cut off all my ropes, he undid the 'belt'... maybe those hands were not ill-meant hands after all.

"You. Die. _Now._" the large man yells, and I can hear the _shing_ as a sword appears from its sheath, preparing to recede down onto my neck for the final blow.

"DAD!" the little boy yells, his voice strained and clearly showing agony and despair.

I guess maybe he did want to save me after all.

In the split second that the blade flies through the air, I hear a hiss and instantly the human recoils as his sword is melted into pieces- by an acid of a dragon that only I can imagine of to be here at the moment.

In the split second right after, the huge form of Changewing collides with the large man, causing him to lose his grip on my snout, giving me a chance to be free once again.

_Changewing-_ I begin, gratitude of being given so many chances to live by him flooding into me once again.

_I know,_ Changewing mutters. _Just get out of here first._

I roar, aiming for the ceiling and instantly blasting a hole at the ropes above and launching myself towards the fragments of the singed hole. As I spread open my wings and fly through the hole, I turn around to see Changewing right behind my tail- and the little boy, on the ground, his face relieved of worry. As I fly out, I see him give me a little wave.

Which is exactly the same time that a spear pierces my side. It would have been hard not to hit, given the incredibly small gap I made myself.

**H**

My expression immediately changes from happiness to anger as my father wipes his hands with a victorious look. Toothless lets out a cry of pain, the spear injuring him but not enough for him to plummet to the sea below. Instead, he assumes a limping flight position as he slowly flies away- but I know that he won't get far. Injuries like that hurt, and eventually he will be forced to land soon.

"DAD!" I yell, getting up with new found rage. "WHAT DID YOU DO THAT FOR?"

"At least he'll die in the sea," my father says with satisfaction, ignoring my words. With a grin on his face, he walks straight out of the arena without looking at me.

Is this really, really, the man who had trusted dragons with his village?

I slump to the ground, my feet giving away as I lose what little hope I had before coming into the arena. Toothless will surely die at sea, and there's nothing I can do about it.

"Hiccup!" a female voice calls, and I turn around.

A Nadder swoops in from the recently blasted hole, followed by Astrid, who holds out a hand urgently as my father turns around, and sees me mounting Stormfly.

"GET BACK HERE!" my father yells, running back into the arena in rage, but it's too late. "THUNDERDRUM!"

"Good luck trying to find him," Astrid mutters, blasting off the ground and into the air, me grabbing her side tightly as she flies higher and higher, out of my father's wrath.

"Astrid!" I pant, the rush of events making me quite dizzy. Toothless freed, Toothless injured, and Astrid coming in just as all was lost. "Toothless-"

"I know, I know," she mutters, urging Stormfly to fly faster. "I saw him flying towards the woods. We've got to get there."

"He's flying?" I ask, relief flooding into my head. At least I can follow him from there.

"I think," she says. "That spear went deep, didn't it? He'd have to land somewhere nearby."

"Yeah," I say. "Hopefully."

"Does your father think Toothless will survive?" she continues, patting Stormfly urgently. "He might come after you if he thinks there's still hope for Toothless."

"No," I say, and for once I'm glad that Astrid is ahead of me in these things.

"Good," she says, swooping down towards the landmass that appears before us. "Can you take it from here? I'll go lie to him or something so he doesn't pursue you."

"Right," I say, jumping off the Nadder even before we land. I reach the grassy land on both feet, leaving Astrid hovering above the ground slightly, the sea right under her. I realize that she dropped me off right where we had that flight together… on Toothless. It's the only part of the forest to not be covered by the abundance of trees, which is probably why she dropped me off here in the first place. "You're head of Dragon Training."

"For now," she says with a smirk, which turns into a worried look as she says the next words. "Toothless isn't going to just stand still and let you get close to him, you know. What are you going to do when you get to him?"

I catch the glint of red scales sliding through the forest. _The_ _Changewing._

"What a friend does," I say, turning tail and taking off towards the woods.

**T**

As I walk through the woods, my side winces with pain at every movement of the legs. I call out for Changewing, but he is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he has left me here. It is not an illogical thing to do; there is no way this spear can dislodge from my body, especially with the undexterous claws that dragons have, and even then there would be no way to cover up the wound anyway. I'd either die of blood loss or of crushed will.

_Dammit,_ I mutter to myself, being careful to not let the spear hit any of the trees. _I was on the brink of freedom… now I'm on the brink of death. How beautiful._

Snorting grimly at my own gallows humor, I make my way blindly through the forest, not knowing where I'd actually end up. I might as well just die here, for all that matters. There's no saving me, anyway.

And yet, a small fire- not my dragon fire, but instead a human fire- _hope_ keeps giving me the energy to move forward. Changewing must not have it, because he's already abandoned me. Why is this human fire inside of me? Was it because that human made contact with me? No. Fires don't pass on so easily like that. Plus, the boy doesn't have my fire.

Or maybe it's just something that comes out when you're about to die. Maybe it's something that's not exclusive to humans. Maybe they don't have fire at all.

I try to call out to my inner flame, but it's a tiny flame as of now. It's been like this ever since I woke up that day in a forest. I wonder if it ever grew into a blazing flame, like my flame of hope right now.

So many questions. It's not going to matter, since I'm going to die anyway.

Stumbling on randomly, my eyes shut from the increasing pain, I skid on a rock and lose my balance. My wings do not open as I topple downwards, the ground colliding with my stomach as I lie there in agony, wondering what in the world made me, the Night Fury, from a protector of the night dragons, to a weakling searching for a place to rest before they die.

My tongue laps at something cold, and I feebly realize its water. I lick it tiredly, as it could be the last thing before I can appreciate, before I die. It's not something that I've ever really considered, thinking of all the good things in my life before I won't have any more, because it's near pointless to do so. But now I know why; it's because you still want to live. You want to see these happy things once again.

_Goodbye, Changewing,_ I think to myself, closing my eyes as my pains continue to stab at me. But it's no good, really. The pain is still there, but I feel far more relaxed than I have ever before.

But maybe I won't die. Maybe I'll wake up and still find the spear in me, and then wince again and again until I pass out. And maybe then I'll die. Maybe, like that boy, the spear will torture me until I give into my pains, and allow myself to fade into nothingness. And maybe, maybe then, I might finally be cleansed of my pains.

So many maybes. I spend the rest of my consciousness thinking about them as I black out completely.


	16. Darkness

**This is Absi B's chapter.**

**I know it's been a bit of a longer wait, but this is also my longest chapter ever, so you've got more to enjoy. I hope you do!**

* * *

**H**

I may not be as adept at camouflage as the Changewing, but I'm giving it my best shot. I'm sticking to the tree trunks as much as I can, because my vest blends in pretty well with the whorls of brown and black, and my shirt matches the shade of the foliage they hold. Every time I have to cross an open space, I wait for a while and make sure there is absolutely nothing there before I dash across.

Be it person or dragon, I need to be wary of everything that moves. The Changewing could be about, or even Toothless. Because any Night Fury, even an injured one, can still be a deadly Night Fury.

If another person, save for the teens, finds me, then I'll be marched back to my father, and he'll organise a search for Toothless. With him hurt like that…he doesn't have a chance. That's why I'm going to find him.

I'm his only chance.

For once, the tables have been turned. So many times prior to this, Toothless has been the one saving me. This time, I get to be his saviour.

A rush of pride fills me as I think this. Pride that there is something out there that can create a love so strong, and that I am willing to do anything for it. I'm proud of my bravery here, because so often I'm the cowardly one. My love for Toothless has given me strength and bravery to find him and get him back to me.

My love for Toothless is the reason I have to get him back, too. I don't think I could bear the heartbreak if something else happened to him, and he never remembered. I'd die of a broken heart. I've actually heard of that happening on Berk- when people are so deeply in love, and their partner gets killed in a battle, sometimes the survivor can die soon after from the pain of losing the one they value most.

I don't want to die like that. I think if he didn't remember me, I'd have to just end my suffering myself. At least that way, I'd have some kind of control over my last act on this earth. But I don't want it to end that way. I want it to end with Toothless and I soaring through the skies once more, his happy voice in my head and his soothing flames to warm my bones on the cold nights.

That thought is what drives me to do this. It's like the thought of him lying there in the Cove that day, unable to fly and unable to escape, and I vowed to do everything in my power to help him. That same emotion, that same thought is what's giving me the strength to go on right now.

Care.

I know I'm not the most stealthy Viking, although probably more so than my burly father, but I need to give this task my all. So I've resorted to crawling through the undergrowth, pausing often to poke my head up and scan the area around me. I've still seen no signs that Toothless has been anywhere nearby, but every now and then I see a glimmering red scale, and I know that I'm on the right track.

The question is now: who will get to Toothless first?

**H**

I've been crawling since the sun was directly overhead, and now it's scorching my back, casting its light at a shallow angle across the ground and giving me a rather large and unwanted shadow. I've been mapping my progress in my sketchbook, but so far every part of the map is covered with a cross, and there aren't any white spaces left for me to search in. I give up on being stealthy, convinced my hunt is futile and there's nobody around anymore. Standing up, I take in my surroundings, and realise there's a lot more to where I am than meets the eye.

From my new elevated position, I can make out minute details in the landscape which, to anybody else, would mean nothing at all, if they even noticed them, which would be unlikely. I see the slight indentations on the grass and foliage where a heavy creature has passed by. I see the occasional bent twig or crushed berry where it's been hit by a passing wing or tail.

And I can even make out a footprint or two in the mud off to my left. I move quickly over it, careless of the cracking and crunching sounds I am making. On closer inspection, the footprints are uneven, one deeper and more pronounced than the other. I guess that's from the spear; it's hurt him badly enough to affect his walking.

The thought of Toothless, alone and injured, brings into sharp relief the cruel reality of life and death. Some people say that it's a cycle; one must die so another can be born. But I don't think of it that way. Some people say that you die, but then you're reborn as a new creature. But… that's not right either. I think that once you die, that's it. You've had your lot. Nothing can ever replace you in the world. But what I don't know about it what happens after you die.

Do you spend eternity in heaven? Do you just sink into the inky blackness and know nothing more for the rest of time? This is a question I can't even begin to answer.

This is a question I don't want to answer.

Standing up, and wiping the mud from my knees as best I can, I set off in the direction the tracks are pointing. I know that these tracks are the road to Toothless.

I've not been following the tracks for long when they suddenly stop. I realise this is because the ground is now too hard for any impressions to be made. But… even so, Toothless should have been able to. It tells me that he's weak, and running out of time. I look around frantically, sprinting over to any trace of Toothless that I can find. I no longer take any heed of the cacophony I am creating in the darkening forest; all I care about is finding Toothless before it's too late.

**H**

As night falls, I am still hunting, only now I do so in darkness. This makes it ten times harder to spot any large black object. But the moonlight does give me one advantage.

Even in darkness, the light of the moon can pick out the sticky sheen of blood.

It's when I see the first smear of blood that I know I'm close. My inner flame swelling by the second as it fills with hope, I follow eagerly. And, after many hours of searching, I am rewarded with the most wonderful sight.

Toothless.

As I get nearer, I can see what has really happened. The moonlight lights in an eerie manner what has befallen my most faithful companion. The left side of his scales are slick with coagulated blood, and, probing further, I can feel the shaft of the spear protruding from his flank. Even though his side feels like a mess, his eyes are closed and his face is… serene. It's really peaceful and beautiful. Like what it used to be like. Before he forgot me. Before the only thing he knew was hatred and revenge. Beneath my hand, I can feel the gentle pulse of his heart, and a slow, shallow inhalation of air into his lungs. He's alive, but in a bad way. I've got to do something to help.

But I can't do anything now. I'm going to have to wait until the sun comes up, so I can examine him properly. With something (and someone) like this, I can't afford to screw up like I so often do.

The waiting is agony. Every minute drags by like it's an hour. I lean against a tree and stare at him, stare at his chest to make sure it keeps rising and falling in a slow but regular rhythm. I don't want to sit, because I know that if I do then I'll surely fall asleep and I won't be watching over him.

After all that he's done for me, he deserves his own guardian angel. He watched me after the battle with the Red Death, and to this day I still don't know how long I was unconscious for. It could have been weeks. The least I can do is watch over him for a few hours.

Unfortunately for me, the sight of him sleeping is just so… soothing. The regular rhythms his body is keeping to, the peaceful expression, the occasional gentle sigh. It's enough to send anyone to sleep. It's plenty to send an exhausted boy to sleep.

And so I drift off, still leaning against the tree, with the peaceful face of Toothless imprinted on my memory.

No nightmares haunt my dreams tonight. I've got a Night Fury to hold them back.

**H**

The sound of the wind rushing past my ears is what finally awakens me, along with the rapidly rising sun. I jerk awake, and squint while I work out what's happened. When I realise I've fallen asleep, I scramble to my feet to check if Toothless is okay.

He's fine. His breathing and expression remain the same. The only thing that's changed is the light. Now I can see his injuries in full light, I can see that ne needs help. Now.

But I'm no healer. And I can't get help from anybody in the village either. Astrid is buying me a short time to fix this, so I've got to do it myself.

I never imagined I'd have to learn how to heal so quickly. And with the body of my best friend as a practice run. First of all, I look about, then realise stupidly that I'm sitting right next to a pool. Luckily no blood has tainted the water, so I bend down and take a few quick gulps before straightening up and seeing how I could utilise the water to its greatest extent.

Using my cupped hands as a bucket, I slosh water onto Toothless' side, trying to wash away some of the blood. I cautiously try and lift his wing a little, so that I can cast a bit more light on the situation, but it hangs limp and lifeless by his side. I have to resort to bodily heaving it into the air and across his body. Luckily, Toothless is deeply asleep, and my ministrations haven't caused him to stir. Yet.

After I've finished cleaning the wound as best I can, I take a proper look at it. The spear has not penetrated too deeply, from what I can tell; it should be a simple case of yanking the spear out and binding it to stop bleeding and infection.

Before I try and pry the spear free of his scales, I gather up some moss and soft leaves to use as padding for the binding. I use my small dagger to saw painstakingly through some long vines that will help secure the moss pad to his side. And, at last, I am ready.

Gritting my teeth, I gently grasp the shaft of the spear and try and ease it out slowly. But the spear remains steadfastly buried in Toothless' side. I pull a little harder, but still nothing. Sighing, because I know this was a last resort, I give a hefty tug and feel something give. After this, the spear slides out smoothly, slicked with Toothless' blood. When the head of the spear clears the wound, a fresh trickle of blood issues from the slash.

But this is good. A trickle of blood tells me he's still alive. That his heart, full of compassion and love, is still beating, however feebly, in his chest.

Nevertheless, I can't afford to let him lose much more blood. So much of it is already covering the ground and the surrounding bushes; I don't know how much more blood loss he could handle. I quickly grab the mossy squares and press them to his side. With one hand occupied holding the moss to the wound, I use the other hand to awkwardly trail the vines around his body, being careful not to bind his wings or tail.

And now for the hard part- getting the vines under his stomach. I see that there's no way to do this other than to shove and force his limp form around to try and get the vines where they need to go.

So that's what I end up doing. With my severe lack of strength, it takes the best part of an hour, but by the end the wound is protected as best I can, and Toothless is still asleep. Which are both positive steps in the right direction.

Now the next problem is getting him somewhere my father won't be able to find him.

**T**

I just thought I'd sink off into oblivion and never feel my body again. My consciousness would just dissipate into the air, leaving my shell of a body to rot and sustain whatever animals happened across it on their journey through the forest. It would be painless and pleasurable. The white darkness would welcome me with open arms.

Apparently, the gods do not look down kindly on me, for alas, it is not my destiny to die on this cold day. Instead I can feel a deep throbbing down my side, and one of my wings is numb from the way I've been laying. I don't have the strength to open my eyes yet. I think I just need to lie here for a while, and think about what could have been.

I'm cursing whatever force is up there right now. Could it not have been merciful this one time, and just let me fade away without any hassle? It's not like there's anyone left to mourn my passing besides Changewing. Nothing much in the world is going to change if I'm not in it anymore.

So now I'm here, stuck in my throbbing body, unable to wake, unable to die. It's almost like a living purgatory. The only thing to keep me company here is my own thoughts. Although, I have always said that the best intellect to test in a conversation is your own, and I can think of far worse people to be with than myself right now.

That boy, for example. He tries to free me, twice, but instead only flaunts his freedom and taunts me about the lack of mine. And when he does finally free me, all that happens is that I get hit with a spear. Some rescue attempt that turned out to be.

I realise now that he's never tried to hurt me, even though that is still my one goal in this lifetime- hurt him. Even though he's apparently only trying to help, I hold grudges for far longer than most, and one moderately kind act is not enough to absolve this boy of his previous wrongdoings.

Suddenly my dulled senses come alive once more, and alert me to pressure on my body that could not be from my wings. In my comatose state, I am unable to do anything; I need to find a way back to my body. A way back to life.

So, I try and organise my thoughts in this pale ether I'm floating in. Slowly, the remainder of my consciousness, including that mysterious flame from earlier still burning feebly but refusing to go out, even the parts I didn't remember existed all coalesce into one vaguely spherical mass. Concentrating further, I try and coax the unwilling ball of jumbled thoughts into a shape resembling a winged beast. More specifically, a crude copy of my own form.

Because if I want to get out of here fast, the best way to do it is to fly.

It takes all my concentration, but eventually the sphere has wings. They're black as the night which gave me my name, but they are short, stubby, and ill-formed. The white darkness I'm floating in is thick and viscous, so the act of flying is more like swimming through gooey mud. Awkwardly, my feeble wings begin to flap, slowly becoming accustomed to the movements required to create motion. Even though in this dream world there is no sense of up or down, I instinctively know which way to fly to reach myself again.

I've been flapping my tiny wings for some time now, and at last the end is in sight. I can see a bold dark shape not too far in the distance, looming over my rough amalgamation of a draconic form like a fierce wave looms over a doomed ship. I eagerly push forwards harder, trying to get there, and then I stop.

Do I really want to go back? Do I really want to go back to the place where I have a mortal body that can be wounded and destroyed by cruel humans, whose sole aim in life seems to be to torture the most graceful and beautiful creatures? If I stayed, I could learn to have complete power over my consciousness and its form; I could take whatever shape I wanted and do what I liked for the rest of time. Nobody could ever disturb me again. I am the Night Fury, black and solitary, the ruler of the might skies.

Staying here would ensure that I stay solitary for the rest of my days. Until I tire of endlessly wandering the ether and just let my consciousness dissipate. Unlike my mortal body, my soul and consciousness are eternal and everlasting, and it is not the death of my body, but the loss of my will to have either of them, that causes them to finally break up, and my last ties to life to be extinguished.

But... if I stay in this bright world, then surely I am no longer the ruler of the night skies? And I can never truly be king of a place where I am the only living soul existing within it.

And the tiny flame that still stubbornly refuses to flicker out within me is pulling me... dragging me towards my mortal body. Though I want to be alone, this flame seems to know my carnal desires and instincts, and it knows that at my core I want to be accepted by at least one creature in my lifetime. As I near the black form, its outline becomes more defined, and the tugging of the flame at my consciousness grows ever stronger.

At last my vision is completely filled with my mortal form. I can see it clearly now, from a perspective I have never witnessed before. It is... surreal. My body is the deepest black, and in the glimmering light of the dreamworld the scales glow, giving the colour an ethereal quality. My wings are full and ready to launch me into the sky at a moment's notice. My tail fins are spread wide, designed to give me the greatest manoeuvrability and speed of all the dragon species. As I round to the front of myself, I see my green eyes flicker open, and I see for the first time what every other creature sees.

My eyes are so many shades of green it's impossible to list or count them all. Thin blue veins are joined by green and brown sketchy lines as they wend their way into my pupils. At this moment, my pupils are narrow slits, this look expressly designed to instil fear into the hearts of any creature that comes my way. My teeth are slightly bared as I seem to face an unseen intruder. I can sense my inner flame burning bright and full of life and passion. The Night Fury flame also burns strongly within me; this is the light that gives me my fire.

Now I truly do know my reason for returning to the land of the living. Because I miss my draconic form. I miss my sleek shape and perfectly aerodynamic wings. I love my powerful flame and the fear in others eyes as they see me. If I stay here, I am just a roughly formed blob with no flame and nobody to terrify.

This is the last thought that bubbles through my consciousness as I surge upwards and into my body once more.

**H**

The sun is gently warming my body as I doze on Toothless' side. My skin is making the barest hint of contact with his body, but whenever I touch his flank more, it feels like ice is being placed upon my fingertips. He is freezing cold- the complete opposite to what he should be. I'm wondering if I found him too late, and I've just prolonged his suffering only for him to die anyway.

I close my eyes and feel the sun trying to force its way through my closed lids. The heat of the sun is really keeping me warm now. In fact, it's getting so hot that I have to take off my vest. As I do so, one of my hands brushes the black form behind me, and I recoil in shock. It's... warm. Convinced I'm delirious, I move my hand close to Toothless' prone form, and I can feel a definite heat emanating from the black scales. Placing my hand onto his body, I have to jerk it away quickly as the heat is immense. I can't keep my hands on him for more than a few seconds at a time, lest my hands get burned.

So... Toothless has gone from being icy cold to boiling hot, all in the space of a few seconds? This isn't making any sense. I was scared for his life when his body was full of cold, but now it is full of warmth I am also afraid. Toothless isn't meant to be this warm. Maybe he's got a fever, or an infection or something? Sometimes I wish I'd listened to my father when he said that men need to learn how to heal as well as women. Especially now.

But the thought of my father yelling at me (whenever he wants me to do something, he always yells never speaks. He never asks, only commands) brings back the rush of memories about the previous night, and I collapse to the ground when I realise my own father has probably disowned me. I know he's never really wanted a hiccup like me. He's always wanted a big strong boy, gutsy and glory-hunting. Not a scrawny scrap of a boy like I am. And now, I've given him the best argument to use against me.

I've disobeyed him. But, this isn't the normal it'll all be better in a few days kind of disobeying. This is ignoring the people you love to protect the one you love most. But he doesn't see it that way. He just thinks I'm mad. Mad for wanting a rogue dragon. Mad for doing everything in my power to keep said dragon alive.

And yes, I'll admit that I'm mad. I'm mad about Toothless. That's why I need to do this.

The ground underneath my feet is slowly beginning to smoke and singe, and I can only hope that Toothless cools down soon or the searchers will have a forest fire for a signal as to where to look for us. I grab some water in my hands and throw it towards him, but it only explodes into steam upon contact with his scales. All I seem to be doing is making the situation worse. I get to my feet and move round Toothless until I am face to face with his closed eyes.

"Hey... Night Fury? I know you can wake up. Come on, I need you." My pleading words seem to make no impact on the sleeping form, then suddenly I hear a gentle sigh, and there is a slight shifting motion in his legs.

Did he... hear me?

A grin quickly spreading across my face, my flame soars far into the sky with hope. I move my hands towards him, and I find my hands are not burned by the contact any longer. He must have heard me!

As I revel in the feel of his rough scaly head in my fingers, Toothless gives a larger sigh, and visibly shifts. I see that he's slowly coming back to me. His breathing is deeper, and his heart beats strongly in his chest. I can see the sunlight hitting his glimmering scales, which are slowly returning to their healthy sheen. As the light hits his back, it shatters into an incredible spectrum of colour, making him appear not black, but almost... luminescent. It's like he's been sent down from the gods, a being far superior to any other, here to protect and care for those less fortunate than himself.

I see him as a protector. No matter what his mind remembers, he'll always be a protector. Because even if his mind no longer has any memories of protecting me, his heart and soul will have that feeling forever imprinted on them, and he can't do anything to wipe that away.

His sleek, muscled tail curls gently around his body, ending in the angular tail fins that first initiated our friendship. The membranes flutter gently in the breeze, catching the wind as perfectly as a feather.

As I stand and watch, Toothless extends his wings, huge for a dragon of his size. I duck out of the way to avoid the leading edge of his left wing, but when they are out of the shade I can fully appreciate his power, and his beauty. But it is not conventional beauty; his beauty comes from the angular shapes and sense of power and ferocity exuding from every pore. Even on the ground like this, he is a fearful sight to behold.

He is the perfect predator.

But the looping green vines and mossy patch on one side ruin the aura of invincibility that usually surrounds him. My awkward bindings are ruining his perfection. He is no longer perfect. What had once been flawless perfection, is now flawed perfection.

And this isn't the first time I've done that to him. When I shot him down the night of the raid, I robbed him of his ability to fly and his natural perfection and invincibility. He had to rely on me to stay untouchable.

As I continue to watch him, his ear plates begin to twich, and guttural rasping sounds begin to emanate from him. I can tell that he's calling out for friends, other dragons to come and help him.

With this thought comes the realisation that if another dragon hears him, they'll come running. And the rider of that dragon will know exactly where to look for us. I quickly approach his side, and press my hands gently there, murmuring gentle words, asking him to stop.

**T**

I can feel something touching my side again. My body and my senses have almost completely returned to me now, and I am ready to fend off whatever it is that is trying to attack me. Tensing my muscles slowly, so the intruder is not alarmed, I flick open my eyes and spin round, sending my attacker crashing into some nearby bushes. This movement causes my side to start throbbing once again, and, glancing round, I see that there is a rough binding over the spear wound.

But right now, I have more pressing matters to attend to than to wonder about where the dressing came from. I have to end the life of whatever it was that tried to attack me. I slink stealthily up to the bushes where my prey was thrown, and I rise up onto my hind legs, ready to deliver the death blow.

* * *

**A/N It's all down to LesserWraith to decide what's going to happen next...**


	17. Timeless

**Here you are! This is LesserWraith's chapter. And it's looooong.**

* * *

**A**

"I keep telling you, chief, that Toothless is dead!" I say, crossing my arms and standing angrily in front of him as he heads towards the port. "I saw him go down!"

"Oh, and you just let him die?" Stoick asks, a skeptical look on his face. "That's hard to believe, Astrid."

"He was bleeding heavily and he was descending with every flap!" I say, glaring at him with a special kind of hatred that I normally reserve for people that don't listen to me. "There wasn't anything I could do!"

"Then why are you standing in my way, conveniently blocking my access to the boats?"

"Because he _died,_ chief," I say, hoping that his Viking thickness will get him through that. "There's no use looking for a dead dragon."

Stormfly, who is out of the Chief's sight, croons nervously at these words.

"I'm going to check anyway," he says with finality. "I need to make sure that you're not pulling off another one of your antics."

"No!" I yell, rushing up to his front and holding out both hands. "You're not going out to sea!"

**H**

"Ugh..." I groan, feeling the hard ground below me as I land flat on my back. I get up, silently cursing myself for believing too much. When you think that something will happen, you try to do whatever you can to make your beliefs true. This is not totally bad, the fact that I have managed to save Toothless from death's grasp purely from the thought that Toothless would understand me again, but I believed too far.

Just like when I believed that Toothless would never come back, when I lost all despair to the raging storm of the fire that burned through my mind. It was just then when he _did_ come back, and when everything went wrong from then.

Except for the fact that Toothless is alive, which is the only thing that I believe to have done right for him. I'm giving anything for his life now, but it seems that he does not know of it.

Maybe he believes too little. Or I believed too much.

A growling sound above me forces me to snap back to my senses. Toothless's large form, angry and snarling, steps over the bush and looks around angrily, hoping to catch the thing that irritated him from his sleep. He turns his head from left to right, growling as his eyes seek out prey.

"Tooth-Night Fury," I call him quietly. I shouldn't have said Toothless-

His head snaps downward instantly, his eyes slit and angry. I hear the small spark of flame and instantly roll to my side as a firebolt slams into the ground, exactly where I was a split second ago.

"Night Fury," I say again, forcing myself to get up as he readies another bolt my way. "Hold on-"

I duck as another blast of fire whizzes above my head, singeing off my hair slightly. If this was another play session with him, another time that we recreated in the woods, this burn would be nothing more than just an act of playfulness of a dragon.

Now, it is a mark of anger and hate towards the very human who tried to save his life. But seeing the things that I could actually accomplish, maybe I do deserve to be shot to death.

Toothless roars angrily at me, his body several feet from me, but it won't matter if he tries to pounce on me, which would kill me in an instant. Those claws would rip through me, and it wouldn't even matter which part of my body it was, I'd be split in half at that instant, and I might have not even felt the bone-splitting rip of bones that his powerful claws would bring upon me.

I wonder why he isn't doing that right now.

He opens his mouth to shoot another bolt at me, his eyes slit in determination and fury.

And maybe I do deserve to be shot. It's not like I matter to anyone. Not even my father cares about me.

It's his life that matters, not mine.

**T**

I grin grimly as I ready my next fire blast. It's so fun, toying with his life, just like he's been toying with mine for so long. If he doesn't get out of the way now, I'll blow him up in an instant, and that'll be the end of his miserable life, full of nothing but plans to make a dragon's life hell. These people, these humans, do not deserve to live. There are rogue dragons, too, that have nothing else better to do than harm other dragons, and it's my job to put them to rest.

I deserve a raise, by the way things are going. Maybe I'll get honored too, for working overtime.

I delay my shot for just another second, waiting for him to jump and scurry away like the little lowlife that he is.

Half a second passes, and he does not move. I growl to tell him, _One last chance._

Another half a second passes, and he still does not move. Instead, he folds his arms.

"Go ahead," he says, looking at me with defeat. His chest deflates, his shoulders droop, and his eyes do not leave me. "Incinerate me."

_What? Is this boy suicidal?_ I ask myself, closing my mouth in confusion. Never, in my life, have I ever found willing prey, and never have I found one so willless. The dragons that I have hunted and hurt, the ones that disobeyed the rules of the Night, never went down without a fight. Even the deer would scream just before my jaws closed down upon them.

Never, have I seen a human who surrendered to a dragon so easily. Nor have I ever found one so defiant. This boy… is _challenging_ lightning and death itself.

"Well?" he asks, his mouth dry and his legs stiff. "You could have killed me any moment we were together. You could have crushed me with your paws. But you never did. You always used them as a strong foundation to keep us both up, through dark and dusk."

He throws an angry glare at me, and I see a hint of water in his eyes. I recall them as tears. And I remember seeing them somewhere before…

"Your fire was never aimed to kill me. You always used that to bring us out of harm's way. You even gave me some of yours, to heal my leg."

He reaches into a nearby brush, pulls out a metal contraption, not unlike a human leg, and hold it out at arm's length. My mind twitches at the thought, but my eyes do not leave the human. Why do I feel like I've seen this before, too? And why does it fit his leg so perfectly?

"So, what are you waiting for?!" he says loudly, throwing the prosthetic aside. "Kill me! I don't matter to no one, and I certainly don't matter to _you!_"

My eyes transit from slitting to widening as I watch the boy continue his rants. Does he matter to me? Of course he doesn't…

No. He does. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here, trying to kill him, trying to give him what he had given to me.

But had he really meant to give those things to me? If he really did, really did try to taunt me of my life and duty, then why does these actions of his betray them so much? Why does he acknowledge the fact that he knows is not true?

And why, why, is he standing right here, accepting, even welcoming death, instead of running away like a criminal would?

"Just kill me," he says with a broken tone. I can tell that it took a lot of effort to get those words out. "J-just kill me and fly away. If you stay here long, the other people will find you and kill you."

My eyes shift gaze from him, his fallen metal leg, and the woods around him. I sense nothing in the vicinity, but I can feel the fear and anger that he holds as his nerves start creeping up on him.

In my mind's eye, that has been blind to the actions of others for so long, slowly begins to shine a new light onto this boy. Maybe, maybe, and only maybe, does this boy truly want to save me. He wants me to leave because there will be people coming, and there is nothing to be gained for him to do so. In fact, if I kill him, it will be his loss.

But will it be my gain?

**A**

"You can't go!" I shriek, blocking Stoick from the boats with both hands. He's going to have to get past me if he's going to do anything more insane. If Toothless is killed, what will become of Hiccup? What will become of the dragons? There would surely be another war, and it's going to be one that we can't handle.

"Oh, so you've given up on lying, eh?" Stoick says, a vindictive smile on his face. "Thought that you'd give in earlier."

"You're not going to harm any dragon!" I yell. "Never!"

"Astrid, be a kind girl and shut up for once," he says with malice. "Don't make my job as chief any harder than it is."

I gape at the usage of his words. So reckless. So Vikingish. sometimes I wonder if I really am one, despite being raised with that kind of mentality all my life.

"You're the one who made your job hard," I nearly spit at him as I regain my composure. "With your prejudice against Toothless."

"I keep telling you, you idiot, that he's a beast," he says, his eyes flaring. "If he dies, the village will be in peace."

"It won't!" I yell, losing my temper. "Just because you're so stuck up on what you think is right-"

Stoick shoves me to the wooden pier. I roll over and quickly regain my footing, but he's already jumped into the boat and untying the ropes that it. The boat creaks heavily at his maneuvers, and for I moment I hope it will sink, but wishing never helps.

"You can't go!" I shriek desperately, jumping into the boat before he can untie the last of the bindings.

That's when he draws a knife on me.

"Get off," he says with contempt. "Idiot."

**T**

Against all odds, against all instincts that have run through my kind for so long, against everything that has been in my mind since I woke up, I do not rip him apart.

I do not incinerate him.

I do not kill him.

I stay exactly where I am.

I do not kill him.

And, just like me earlier, the boy looks confused.

"Night… Fury?" he asks quietly, looking at me with an unbelievable gaze. "Why?"

I spread my wings, the wounds still painful but less hurting, and nod my head at these wounds. I try my streak of luck, wondering if it is truly right for stars to cross and dreams shatter, when such little things like understanding still continue to go unknown and wisped away.

_Did you do this?_ I think in my head, looking back towards the human. I croon just to make sure that he knows that I'm, asking something.

"No," he says, shaking his head slowly.

I stare at him in shock. Did he just…?

No.

I dare not believe anything at the moment. This can't be true. He couldn't have just read what I was thinking, right?

Is it only the stars, nonexistent to the eyes in this time of day, that are crossing?

I look at my wings again, making the exact same motions from earlier.

_Did you heal these wounds?_ I ask in my head, half doubting that he'll answer correctly, and hoping that he'll answer.

He looks at me for a while, his eyes staring at me with those green peripherals of his.

"Yes," he says.

Do dreams shatter, when truth blooms?

I look at him for the longest time possible. Every aspect of the boy gives him the impression of a normal boy. Proportional legs, proportional knees, dexterous hands, and a clear head. I look at him, I stare at him, I take his body in with my eyes, and try to understand what this boy does to know what I think.

Is it truly the stars, that are crossing, but not because of coincidence?

"You have to get out of here," the boy, the one who goes by the name Hiccup, I believe, says. "There are people who think you're rogue. You have to get out of here, Tooth-"

I rear my snout back, glaring at him angrily as all my thoughts are blocked out as he says that insulting name. Understanding does not come with common sense, I believe. If I called him, 'fishbone', would he not be angry too?

Hmph. Foolish boy.

I watch as he stares at me, quickly analyzing his own mistake. Do humans think this slow? They don't deserve much more, anyway.

"I- I'm sorry," he apologizes quickly, rubbing his hand through his hair nervously. "I remember that I felt pretty bad when you called me fishbone. But I didn't show it, that's all. It just reminded me of how weak I really was."

My eyes widen in shock once again. Did he just…?

Pushing my anger aside, I advance towards him slowly with a wondering look. This boy says that I've _talked_ to him before. That we have had an interaction before these series of events. Either he is mad, or it has happened before.

He has every reason to lie, to lull me into a false sense of hope.

He has every reason not to, to make me trust him.

**A**

I stare as he slowly advances on me, the knife pointed very pointedly at me.

"You don't know anything, girl," the chief sneers. "You're just a girl."

"So was your wife!" I yell, dodging a swipe from Stoick as he lunges at me. The boat tips to the right, but does not turn over.

_Just a bit more,_ I think to myself.

"Don't-" he almost yells, "you-" he slashes at midair, right where I was, "ever-" he steps onto the boat's front, "insult-" I duck as he swings his fist at me- "my wife!"

A kick catches me off guard, his massive boot slamming into my side as I fall backwards, my back colliding with the boat. His knife lands right next to my hand, my hand reaching to pull it out, but just as I do that, I'm yanked up from the boat's ground ny his massive hands and thrown onto shore, where I double up incessantly.

"Astrid!" Fishlegs yells, pulling me away from the the pier. I get one last look of Stoick's vindictive face as he rows off, the oars pushing massively against the favourable sea currents.

"Dammit!" I say, watching as he sails away into the sea. "You freaking idiot!"

I don't know who I'm cursing: him, or myself. Him for his simple-mindedness, his inability to see more than past the veil of dragons, or mine, for my stupidity and lack of strength. There are so many things to curse at the moment, and I have no idea what to do.

"Argh!" I yell, shoving a nearby stick into the air as hard as I can. It clangs dully as it collides onto the ground.

"What's wrong?" Tuffnut says, appearing from behind my back. His panting tells me that he seems to have run here. "Where's Chief?"

"Your dear chief is off looking for Toothless," I say through gritted teeth, pointing at the rowing boat. "Which would make everything we've done for nothing."

"We got the villagers under control, though," Fishlegs says, jumping off Meatlug quickly. "We even managed to convince Gobber to help us, too-"

"He's not going to get there in time!" I shriek, throwing the knife he used into the sea. "Stoick is already way ahead of us. We've got to get to him-"

"Hold on," Snotlout says, jumping down from the just-landed Hookfang. "I've just been in the air and I haven't seen Toothless at all. How do you know where he is?"

"Because I was the one who dropped him off," I say angrily. "It was a random island that Toothless liked to fly with Hiccup to."

"Is he seriously wounded?" Fishlegs asks, the rest of company joining his side.

"He was dripping blood everywhere the last time I saw him," I mutter. "He couldn't even fly properly."

"And Hiccup's there?! With him?!" Snotlout asks, staring at me with disbelief. "Is he mental?"

"He's Hiccup," Fishlegs says. "He knows that he's doing."

"And?" I ask impatiently. "What about us?!"

"If Hiccup's with Toothless or something right now, wouldn't we unintentionally alert them? What if it alarms Toothless and he does something bad to Hiccup?"

"So you suggest we wait out here?" Ruffnut asks, scratching her head. "That's pretty unheroic."

"No," Snotlout says, pointing to Hookfang. "We go by sky."

**T**

Like his position, I am very aware of my movements towards this being.

Front left foot, back left foot.

Front right foot, back right foot.

Tail.

My movements towards him are slow, but they do not pose any threat, just like the boy does not have any plan of hurting me.

I wonder if he ever did, the way he's acting.

He says nothing, moves nowhere, and calls out to no one as I approach him.

"You really should go, Night Fury," he says urgently. "They'll be on you, and your wounds are still healing."

I circle around him, making a half circle as my tail drags along the ground silently.

_The wounds that_ **you** _healed. Why did you do it?_

He does not turn around. Maybe he is trying to tell me something.

He needs to tell me a lot of things. Like why he can understand me.

Maybe… only maybe… he might be something more.

"Night Fury…" he pleads. "Please. Go."

_Take his advice,_ a voice behind me says. Changewing slithers over to me, a faint hint of distrust in his eyes.

_Why?_ I ask, trying to be as quiet as I can to not let the boy hear me.

_I've seen another human travelling here,_ he says. _And you're still wounded. You need an early head start._

_But… the boy, _I say._ You know about him, don't you?_

_I know that you need to get out of here,_ Changewing says. _Now._

_Hold on,_ I say, my ears perking up in alert. _You need to tell me-__  
_

It's the first rustle of grass that I hear that gives me the warning. I dash forward just in time as a knife lands on the ground, marking an objective that needs to be eradicated from the crossing stars and shattering dreams.

_See?!_ Changewing hisses. _Go!_

"Go!" Hiccup, the boy, whispers. As I near him, I look at his eyes, his sincerity, and his understanding, and I wonder, just wonder; why is this human helping me?

_Get going!_ Changewing screams, disappearing into the background.

I look at the boy, his weak smile, his urgent words, his thoughts of not mattering to anyone.

And I grab him by his cloth.

With an almighty push of my wings, I lift off into the sky, the boy hanging by the scruff of the neck from my mouth.

"Night Fury!" the boy gasps, his hands holding onto the scruff tightly as I move through the air, my legs folded and my wings extended.

It still aches, the wounds, but dragons recover quickly, and I can fly, albeit at a agonizingly low speed. And maybe that will be enough for me to find somewhere to land.

**A**

"There he is!" I yell, pointing to a flying dragon. Toothless, flapping his wings somewhat slowly, is nevertheless in the air, and-

"Hey!" Tuffnut yells, squinting his eyes and pointing towards something green below Toothless. "That's Fishbones!"

"Holy," Ruffnut says. Hanging by Toothless's mouth, is Hiccup, his arms moving around frantically, indicating that he's alive.

"He's safe!" Fishlegs says with relief. I let out a long sigh, patting Stormfly gently as she too expresses her relief.

"I know, I know," I say, smiling gently. "But-"

"Look!" Snotlout yells, pointing at a small boat at the cliff of the woods.

"Is that… the chief?" Fishlegs says. His body begins trembling.

"That is!" I yell.

We watch in horror as Stoick heads to his parked boat, on the other side of the island.

"He didn't see which way Hiccup went- we've got to distract him!" I command, diving down and relaying a shower of spikes down on his boat. He dodges the needles, and looks up to find us, flying high above him.

"What are you doing here?!" Stoick yells, rowing off the island furiously-

_Crash._

A giant boulder slams down on the boat, which Stoick deflects just in time.

"Stop it, Stoick!" I hear Gobber, who has arrived on the Thunderdrum, yell at Stoick from the cliff. "He's not worth it!"

"I'm doing this for my son!" Stoick roars right back, heading around the perimeter of the island, only to have Hookfang swoop and spit fire down on him, impeding his progress.

"Yer' not going to do anything until we talk this through," Gobber says, staring down at the chief. "What do ya think yer' doing, being so obsessed with a Night Fury?"

"Hiccup! Go!" Fishlegs yells towards a random direction, taking off towards his ploy.

"That dragon brainwashed my son," Stoick answers, rowing the boat with impressive speed- towards Fishlegs. "He's going to get what's best for him."

I glance at Snotlout, the twins, and Gobber as Stoick heads towards the wrong direction.

"How long do you think he can convince him?" I ask, brushing my hair with relief.

"That's not going to matter," Gobber says. "Where did the boy go?"

We all look around, but both Toothless and Stoick are out of sight, as if they magically disappeared in the midst of chaos.

Which, of course, is the best time to disappear.

"We've got to find him," I order the others. "Before Chief does."

**T**

"W-what are you doing?" the boy stutters. Which, once again, rubs me the wrong way. Can't he see that I'm taking him somewhere away from the humans, so he can answer me?

_Be quiet, human,_ I think in my head. _I'm trying to concentrate._

"N-Night Fury," he pleads. "Please. I thought you'd just leave and everything would just end-"

My nostrils flare, my mouth threatens to open and drop the boy into the sea below. Even if he could swim, the drop would have killed him.

Nothing ever ends easily. It only ends to you, when it leaves your mind, when you are assured that the matter will not arise again. But then, why do old grudges rise, why do old memories haunt us, if they have truly ended?

Nothing ever ends. These wounds will heal, but they will leave a scar. They will be asked of by the other dragons, and I will tell them what happened.

_Until I get my answers,_ I growl at the boy, _You're staying with me. Be glad that I'm not going to kill you-_

A dull tiredness hits my wings, like a sleeping serenade that slowly reverberates through my body like melody. I feel a sense of foreboding, and I know right away that I will not be able to continue this journey much farther. My legs are getting tired, and my wings are slowly disobeying my commands as they periodically stop moving altogether, paralyzing me to my fates in intervals.

_Oh, no,_ I mutter, calling out my inner flame to send my mind into overdrive, but there's just not enough flame for it to work. I'm beginning to doubt that it's ever been a raging fire before at all.

"You've got to land!" the boy below me yells. "There's a cove on the Isle right up ahead- if you can get there-"

I growl at the boy's words. If he's trying to put up a challenge for me, then this would be near perfect.

Dragons are easily provoked, as I have learned.

I muster the rest of my strength, gripping the boy tightly as I slam open my wings, sending the two of us into a fierce, unsteady glide as the wounds threaten to open again. My body begins to lose thought, fatigue and pain threatening to override my system and plummeting us into death.

Instincts can be powerful, but they can be killing too, as I have learned.

"Head right!" the boy gasps, my grip on his scruff beginning to suffocate the boy. Frankly, the way my body is trying to kill me, I should really drop this boy and find land alone. It would be less of a weight down my front, and I would have far less problems when it comes to tiredness.

Instead, I force myself to stay with me, to let the two of us hurl through the air like some rocky air front.

To let both of us survive. I feel so strange for saying that, because I have never, ever, thought about it before. A dragon, a boy, and a mutual need to survive? Impossible.

My left wing tilts upwards, and my right wing tilts downwards, turning us right in a small angle. I right myself again, the dullness sinking further and further through my body.

It's ludicrous, it's evil, but it's true. I need his abilities to heal wounds. He needs my protection from those evil people. They'd kill him as well, I know it. He was only telling me to go alone because he didn't care about his life.

But this time, he's going to survive. He should be happy, the little fool, that he's going to matter to someone, finally.

My wings give an almighty lurch, the muscles there suddenly jerking involuntary as they freeze in place, unable to move from their spread out position. It's like an unearthly force has gripped onto my body, sending waves of ache and stings through my body. My mouth suddenly clamps shut, unable to move or talk.

"Night Fury…?" the boy asks, somehow noticing my abnormalities.

My legs desperately try to spread, unfold, even just move, but my body finally shuts itself down. Nothing is responding, and I can't even roar to save my soul.

Even less that mysterious boy below me. Not that I see him more than a means of information.

But what does he see me as? Does it matter, anyway?

"There it is!" the boy yells, pointing to a small, rocky island. As fast as we're gliding, I don't feel anything at all. I don't even get the rush of air that normally blasts past my scales as my whole body decides it is time for it to stop.

"Hey- you need to go higher, Night Fury!" he yells, watching the water nervously as we glide lower and lower towards the water. In this state, not even my legs would help me survive, since my body is all frozen and disallowing for physical movement.

_I can't do anything, dimwit,_ I try to growl, but only the thoughts resonate through my head.

"Then- I'm doing this!" he yells, turning around and yanking one of my legs open. As he does, a searing pain jumps through my body, zipping from leg to chest, chest to brain, and all throughout my body, piercing my legs as they tingle uncontrollably. If I could have asked to feel something, anything at the moment...

_Stop it!_ I think in my head, my mouth still refusing to roar. My descent into oblivion continues, the water nearing us slowly but steadily.

"I'm sorry, T- Night Fury!" he says, an edge of pain in his own voice as he yanks my other leg open.

Once again, the searing pain zaps my body like a lightning strike, my muscles gripping even harder as he disturbs their rest. I feel my legs screaming like crazy, and I still can't even move them.

The sea line is nearly upon us. It's not going to matter what he does now, because all attempts will be for naught.

"Just- freakin- hrgh!" he grunts, swinging his feet upwards and catching on my legs.

Suddenly, my eyes widen in fear. Something I've hardly ever felt before.

_Don't-_

And then he brings them down.

_ZING!_

A collateral pain, a colossal sting, an extreme reverse of euphoria blasts through my body, igniting my nerves and zapping my brain with stings and indiscriminate aches that blaze through my body, my nerves, like wildfire.

**_ARRGH!_**

My body screams, screeches, yells every single insult at him, and I spread my wings open, hoping to-

Wait, spread my wings open?

I flap my wings furiously, the pain searing through with every movement, but at least I'm moving.

The boy below me splutters in relief. I didn't even realize that he was halfway in the water.

"Just a little bit more…" he says, and his words are true, if that doesn't sound stupid. With several more forceful flails of my wings, I'm flying right over a grassy cliff, where a tree stump seems to have been here for a while. Right afterwards, I spot a small body of water in a small part of lowered terrain.

Why does this place feel familiar, too?

"Let go!" he yells, tugging at the scruff of the neck as we plummet down towards the elevated ground.

I open my mouth, allowing him to fall to the ground without much injury. I manage to get on all fours just in time as my legs collide with the ground, and I let out a small croon of relief.

"So much for nerves," the boy mutters on one knee, dusting himself off slowly.

As he gets up, I can't help but notice the tiredness the two of us possess. My legs and wings are absolutely aching, and my mind is exhausted from trying to get things done. Even he's panting, the human form of expressing fatigue, but it might be because of the rush of feelings that he got as he pulled off that… stunt.

"Are you okay?" he says, walking up to me closely.

My mind, tired as it is, races with thought once again. This boy forced my legs out. He caused so much pain to my body that it finally broke out of its fatal cramp, and it saved my life. It might have saved his life, too, if he couldn't swim.

This must be one of the only times that he's ever done anything right.

Yet, he's a… human. He's not to be trusted. Only good things die unknown, like flowers in a paradisal garden. There is no one to see as it is born and as it dies, and no one can appreciate its beauty. Those who are contaminated with uninnocence are those who can be seen.

He's not to be trusted.

As he walks closer and closer, I force him away from me with my snarl.

_You may have saved my life, human_ I growl, watching as he backs off slowly. _But I don't need your sympathy._

As he backs a good distance away, I lay my body down to rest, my eyes closing as my body regenerates its energies, fixes its wounds. I can't help but feel a nudging thought in my head.

_That boy saved your life. You should treat him better than this._

_Never. He's just a human, and nothing above that. He doesn't deserve anything._

_That boy saved your life._

_He's just a human._

_That boy-_

_Shut up._

I just need some rest. I just need to fall asleep, get my senses back, and I'll ask him a few questions, and then…

And then… and then…

I don't know. I obviously feel indebted towards that stupid boy, but it feels so stupid and wrong. An enemy of yours, a being that you hate deeply saving your life, doing something good for you, when you've never done anything good for them back. At all. Why would a dragon be at the mercy of a human? It's crazy and irrational. I felt like it torn my pride, even if it resulted in me living.

I just need to sort out my thoughts. But I feel like my thoughts will involve that boy, no matter what.

* * *

**L/N: I can tell you, if this chapter does not get you going, then the next definitely will. Go for it! Be sure to let us know what you think!**


	18. Friendship

**Welcome! This is Absi B's chapter. And it's even longer than the previous one. Enjoy!**

* * *

**H**

Thanks to the dip in the lake I had earlier, I am now dripping wet, and thanks to the night falling fast around us, I am also freezing cold and my only source of warmth hates me and is currently asleep. But at least he's alive. Right now, he's just lying where he landed not long ago, totally exhausted having just saved both our lives. I directed him to the Cove, because it's the only place I could think of at the time, because I knew it was close enough for him to reach, because… maybe the sight of this place, this place where so many emotions and dreams have been shared, will remind him of something. Anything. Anything that would help him on the road to trusting me once more. To remembering me once again, so I could heal his wound properly and we can take to the skies once again.

As friends.

I stand there, shivering, surveying Toothless' body. Perhaps one day he'll even accept his name again. His still form is only disturbed whenever he takes a slow, steady breath, sighing slightly as he exhales. I move closer, and, feeling the heat emanating from his body, realise that I _do _have a source of warmth. Taking off my sodden vest and tunic, I drape them carefully over Toothless' body, being careful to avoid his wings and the binding. After a few minutes, I see steam start to rise from the garments. He's drying them out for me.

By now, the fast setting sun has dipped below the cliff of the Cove, and we are shrouded in shadow as I try and warm my hands whilst standing a few feet from Toothless. My attempts are pretty futile, as my hands still remain stubbornly frozen, so I decide that since he's sleeping I can risk moving closer.

Although, the last time I did that, he woke up and damn near killed me. Or did he? Did he see something in me that he didn't before? He could have killed me any moment we were together in the woods; he could have dropped me while he was flying, but he chose not to. I'm starting to wonder if I'm beginning to mean something to him once more. If he's starting to… trust me.

Those final thoughts make up my mind, and I move right up to Toothless' side and sit cross- legged, reminiscent of the manner in which I sat the first time we met. His ambient heat warms me quickly, and I am soon more comfortable.

Actually, I'm starting to feel really tired. The events of the past few days have taken it all out of me. My relative comfort at this point isn't helping either. Slowly, my eyes begin to drift closed, and I too am soon enveloped in a dream.

**A**

I have to find him. Now. Before Stoick gets there. If I don't beat him to Hiccup and Toothless, then all of Hiccup's efforts will be for nothing. The escape plan, the rescue mission, they'll all fail because I didn't stop the chief from getting to them. It's all my fault if this goes wrong now. I'm just hoping that they chose somewhere I can get to.

"Snotlout," I call, and Hookfang hears my call, turning and transporting his rider over.

"Yeah," he replies, clearly unsteady on board the Nightmare. I think he was rather taken by surprise at the impromptu flight.

"Did you see what direction Toothless and Hiccup headed in?" My voice and eyes are full of pleading. I _need _more information. If I can figure out where I'm headed, I'll have a huge head start over the chief.

"Uh, over that way," he says, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the forest. I sigh, exasperated.

"Can you be any more _specific_?" I ask, a definite hint of irritation in my voice as I stress the final word.

"Last time I saw them, they were headed towards that weird looking rock," is his specific answer.

"Why didn't you tell me that the last time?" I say angrily, marching up to him and punching him in the arm. Hard. Without waiting for his reply, I turn tail and start running towards the forest, calling Stormfly as I go.

**T**

I open my eyes to a cloudless sky, full of twinkling stars. The wound in my side aches fiercely, and I can feel a strange rough object positioned on my back. Looking round as far as I can, I see that the boy, Hiccup, is lying curled up next to me. He's not wearing a shirt, and I realise that his shirts must be the strange sensation I'm feeling.

Carefully I stand up, being careful not to nudge the sleeping boy. As I rise, the tunics he has draped over me slide off, rustling slightly as they do so. I look at them, then at the boy, and I wonder how on earth he managed to find the strength to pull my legs apart like he did. He's so… scrawny. His arms are like sticks, more bone than muscle, and his torso is so pale and tiny every rib is slightly visible under the skin.

I move my head closer to his, huffing slightly on his hair and watching as it ruffles with each breath. He shifts, and his bare arms hug round his body. He's starting to shake really gently, and it takes me a moment to realise that it's the cold night air around him. He must have been sitting near me to get my warmth, and now that I've moved he's cold once more.

To be honest, ever since I've discovered my only love is dead, and my only friend is a shadow of his former self, my life has been filled with coldness. I may be a dragon full of fire and flames, but, bright as my inner flame burns, it burns with a stinging frost. Though the strange sense of care that I have had within me ever since I awoke has not gone away, it too has begun to burn brighter and colder. I feel my care is growing, but… in the wrong direction?

The past few weeks have been such a whirlwind, I'm not sure what to think anymore. I know that my flame is trying to show me something, but I have yet to figure out what it is. Maybe…

No. The boy can't help me. He has no knowledge of things like this. But…

He can sense my thoughts. My feelings. Maybe… maybe he _can _help?

Hmm. Although, even if he _can _help, I'm not sure I want to _let _him help. Although… he has been much more of a help than a hindrance to me lately. He's helped me escape from the kill ring; he's helped to fix my wounds.

That's it. _That's_ why I shouldn't let him help. If I keep letting him do things for me, then he'll expect something back, and I am most certainly _not _one to give favours in return. He'll expect me to bow down before him, submit to his every whim and fancy.

I am not one to be belittled in such a humiliating way. He can _never _conquer me. No matter how much he tries to help me, I will not submit.

He's shivering much more violently now, so I use my hot fire to blast an area close to where he lays. The ground begins to smoulder, and I see him relaxing as the air around him warms up once more. I gently pick his shirts up in my mouth, making sure to keep my teeth retracted, and drape them over his semi- naked form as best I can.

I don't even know why I'm trying to keep him warm. The small spark of care is growing by the minute.

I think back to what Changewing told me what seems like a lifetime ago now. He said… something about how this boy was… my rider?

I must be remembering that wrong. But my memory has never failed me before. It's one of my favourite attributes, if I can say so myself. Ousted from the top spot only by my blue fire and my powerful wings. I'm feeling really weird right now. Inside my heart is a… a _yearning _to help this boy, to plumb the depths of his knowledge and to keep him alive. If only for my own gain.

I need to convince myself that everything I'm doing for this boy is for my own benefit, for my own gain, not his. I'm protecting him, keeping him warm, because he is still of use to me. An asset that is not yet completely exhausted of use.

Though the usefulness of the boy may not be exhausted, I definitely am, and the hole in my side is making its presence felt with every breath. I trail over to the water, wearily dipping my head down and drinking the chilled liquid deeply. I feel the cool water merging and binding with my flame, helping it to grow. Water has never done that before. Maybe it's the coldness of this water that's making it do that.

Retracting my head, creating some small ripples on the lake's glassy surface as I do so, I shake myself off and stumble exhaustedly to a raised rock. Even though I did sleep for a short while earlier, the immense tiredness that came with my stunt takes longer to wear off than that. I climb up the grassy bank to the top of the rock formation, where I can see clearly across the whole area, the boy front and centre.

Resting my head on my paws, I blast the rock in front of me and curl up by it, letting the warmth seep through my bones and guide me towards my dream world once more.

**H**

I wake early, earlier than usual, but this time it's the cold that has a factor in waking me also. I open my eyes, but they don't take in any draconic figure. Toothless has disappeared. I sit up quickly, barely noticing the tunics that slide off my torso and expose me fully to the pre-dawn chill. Looking around, I see that he's resting on the rock nearby.

I pull on my shirt and vest, noting how they are thankfully now dry, and even a little warm. I notice the scorched patch of earth next to me, and I would recognise it anywhere; it's the scorch mark of a Night Fury's flame.

He burnt the ground and laid my tunics over me to keep me warm. He… did something for me. He actually did something caring for me! My inner flame surges what feels like as high as the walls of the Cove, climbing everywhere as it connects with the memories in this place, and the soaring hope I am now experiencing.

I get to my feet, and make my way over to his sleeping figure. There is still a steady warmth coming from his body, which is a good sign. It means he's getting over his wound, the binding of which I should probably replace. I don't know much about healing, but I know to keep the wound clean and not to keep one binding on for too long.

The set task gives my mind a focus, and I walk over to a mossy patch on a nearby tree to try and collect some more. It comes off easily enough in my hand, but in clumps, not a nice neat square like I need. What I really need is something to cut it free with.

But I don't have my knife any more. I have _never _carried a weapon since the first time I met Toothless when I had to… that's it! I threw my dagger into the lake!

Jumping up once more, I sprint over to the area I remember throwing the knife towards, getting down on my hands and knees and searching the shallows for any glint of a knife. Seeing nothing, I plunge my hands in, getting wet once again, and scrabble my hands around at the bottom. Eventually my hand snags on something much sharper than a pebble, and I know that this must be my knife.

Grasping it firmly, I give it a swift yank and it flies free, the hilt almost hitting me in the face in the process. When I bring my hand back down in front of my eyes, I see that it is indeed my dagger, albeit slightly rusted from being in the water for so long. With the sight of the dagger, many memories come flooding back. The dam, which I so successfully built in my mind to block off all previous memories I regret, has been smashed to pieces with a single glance at this weapon I hold in my hands.

I remember my life before Toothless, my father whom I could never impress. I walked everywhere with my head down, eyes to my feet, trying to not get noticed, because I knew that if I did, the only reason someone would want to talk to me would be to insult me. I remember holding this dagger in my bedroom the day after my father gave it to me as a gift on my thirteenth birthday. He told me it was for becoming a man, but I knew that all the other teens would be getting big swords and axes on their birthdays. I knew that the reason all I got was a _dagger _was because my father did not think me worthy of anything more. To him, I was a failure. A mistake. A _hiccup_. I remember swiping it around one day, acting all heroic whilst pretending to slay dragons, then seeing Astrid from my window, swinging her new axe effortlessly into a tree with a meaty thunk.

From that day onwards, I think that's when my real yearning to become a proper Viking took hold. I wanted to prove to my father that I was worthy of an axe, or a sword, worthy of anything more than a measly dagger. I had to prove I wasn't a hiccup. And I knew that I would have to do it all myself. Nobody else would help me with my plight. It's made me more independent than most of the other teens.

I recall that time in the arena, after winning Dragon Training, when I was trying to show the village (or, more accurately, my father) that dragons were peaceful creatures, I picked up a dagger almost identical to this one. I remember dropping it on the floor, my father's hammer, Toothless blasting through the bars to save me.

Maybe not _all _the memories the dagger brings back are bad, then.

But still, many of them are things I want to push behind me. Things that I don't want to imagine. I no longer imagine myself as the champion dragon slayer, I don't want to remember how that's all I used to see myself as.

I force myself to tear my eyes away from the dagger, and turn my head towards the still-sleeping Toothless. My mind clicks back into gear, and I remember that I have a task to complete. Getting to my feet, I move back over the moss, and manage to cut a goodly square on my first attempt. Taking that over to Toothless, I realise I need some vines to secure the patch with. I don't want to use any of the original binding, because I can't afford to take any chances when it comes to Toothless. Going back to the edge of the cove, I find the old vines that I would sometimes climb when playing hide and seek with Toothless, but right now, his health is more important than my memories. So I slash at the vines until I've got enough to create a new binding with, and then carry the heap of makeshift ropes across to the rock. My supplies gathered, I am ready to get Toothless back to his old self.

**T**

Whenever I sleep, it is only ever slight and light; I am always hyper- alert to any disturbances in the air around me. It's how I've survived for so long, being able to detect any intruder, even when asleep.

Right now, I am keeping my eyes shut and my breathing steady just to keep up the pretence that I am sleeping. Trying to lull whatever it is nearby into a false sense of security. Apparently, it's working, because suddenly I feel a cold blade being moved close to my skin. My curiosity, and sense of self- preservation, overcomes my desire to surprise, and I snap my eyes open, pupils narrowed, and keenly looking out for the intruder.

I see the boy, holding a dagger to my chest. He sees my eyes moving, and slowly gets to his feet, the dagger following him.

I _knew _it. I knew I should never have trusted him. He let me escape, he tried to heal me, he helped me get to this place, but only because he wanted my death on _his _tally. He didn't want anyone else to take my body as their own. It has to be him. I am incapable of doing anything now, too exhausted to do anything other than accepting my fate and seeing my own stupidity. My will to live is broken. I stare deep into his eyes, and he stares right back, and I dare him.

_Go on, do it, _I think.

A frown passes across his face for such a short length of time it's a wonder I caught it at all, then he raises the dagger above his head, and brings it down sharply towards my side.

And stops, a millimetre from my scales. Instead of cutting my heart out and taking my skin to hang on his wall as a trophy, he grabs one of the vines and cuts it loose, followed by the others. After this, he peels away the mossy patch, and I realise that he never intended to kill me.

He's still trying to help me.

**T**

I stare at him intently as he goes about his work, trying to puzzle him out, but he remains an enigma I am unable to solve. The prospect of a fiendish puzzle is always one that sparks excitement in my body, because I will not rest until it is solved. I shift and twist, trying to watch his every expression and movement.

"No, T... Night Fury. I'm trying to help. Your twisting will only hurt you more. But if you really want to see it, go down to the lake. I need to wash it out anyway." His tone, where it had once been almost kind and caring, is now cold and perfunctory. It's like I've done something wrong and I've caused his care for me to lessen somehow. He's also guessed me wrongly at this point- he thinks I'm still just trying to look at myself.

What he doesn't know about is the force dragging my care away from myself and towards him. I'm trying to hold on to it, trying to stop its slide towards him, but it's so powerful even I, the most powerful of all the dragons, cannot stop it.

The boy steps back and I get to my feet gingerly, making sure not to bend or twist too far. I take a few painful steps to get down from my perch (somewhat regretting going up there since it's now causing some pain) and slowly make my way over to the lake.

When I get there, I turn sideways, trying to assess the damage that has been done. What greets my eyes is not exactly pretty, but it's a fair sight better than two days ago. The wound is just starting to knit itself back together, and I can see new skin and scales beginning to form at the edges of the laceration. There'll be a scar, certainly, but I've accumulated a fair few over my lifetime and this is just another to add to the collection.

I went through the motions of examining myself partly because I want to see how I am healing, but partly because I don't want to show him my lessening selfishness. I don't want to show him how I am actually starting to care for him, because it scares me. I want to stop caring, to just discard the ability because I don't like where it's going, but I can't, and the powerlessness I have when it comes to care is… frightening. It's like I can't control my own thoughts or emotions anymore.

The boy has thrown everything up into the air. My thoughts and emotions, once peaceful grains of sand on a tranquil beach, have been whipped up into the air and spun around in a whirlwind by a sandstorm. And as much as I'm trying to catch all my emotions again, it feels like I'm using a bucket filled with holes, because as soon as I sense that I have recovered some of the tranquillity inside my mind, it slips away like sand slips through fingers.

By now, the boy has reached the lake, and carefully scoops up water, splashing it all down my left side. The wound begins to sting a little, but since he seems to be trying to heal me and not kill me like I first thought, I assume it is normal. Once my side is damp, he runs off for a moment, returning quickly with some small wads of moss. The boy then starts to dab and rub at the cut gently, presumably trying to clear away some of the dirt and blood which has accumulated there. With each dab of the moss I feel a twinge of pain, but I bear it.

Although, if there is any sign that he is trying to hurt me, I'll be on him in a second and he won't even see me coming.

After a few minutes of his ministrations he stands back and nods, satisfied. He walks off back towards the rock, and I wish to follow, but I do not have energy to get to my feet and walk those few metres. He returns soon enough, though, and presses a larger moss patch against my side.

"Do you think you could hold this?" he asks me, gesturing with his free hand to the patch.

_Why should I be helping you?_ I think to myself, but shifting and trying to use my leg to hold the moss square to my side.

"I'm trying to help you. I know that all you've done so far has only been for yourself, and you should consider this for yourself too. Think about it. If I just left right now, you might die from your wound." His words just remind me that when I am near him, none of my thoughts seem to be exclusively my own. He seems to be able to guess my emotions and words at every turn.

I have not seen any other being with this ability. Not even Changewing, or one of my close friends, whom I have spent more time with than any other creature. But this boy seems to have an uncanny ability to _sense _my words, and yet I have only known him for a few days.

How is this possible?

My mind runs with lightning speed through all the possibilities, but it keeps on returning to one conclusion- that I have known this boy for more than just a few days. But... if I have, where have these days gone? Why do I not recall any of them?

I'm starting to think that my conversations with Changewing have been more truthful than I had originally thought.

My thoughts are interrupted by an irritating rubbing sensation and a rough shove from the boy. He's struggling to get the vines around my body. Before my mind has a chance to ponder the matter, my heart has told my legs to heave myself into a standing position to help the boy.

**_Why?!_** Why do I continue to help him? Why does my heart always win the race to act when it comes to this boy? Why do I keep thinking that so many places here are familiar?

These three thoughts occupy my head fully, and it begins to ache from the amount of contemplation and the sheer unanserability of them.

With my body off the floor, the boy manages to get the vines around my body, and secures them tightly with some complex knots. My wound tended to for the moment, I lower myself to the ground with a sigh, looking up at the boy with reluctant thanks. I don't want to admit that I was wrong, that there is something to be thankful to this boy for.

"Don't think of me as boy," he says back, knowing exactly my thoughts. "My name is Hiccup."

**H**

I turn sharply away from Toothless and make my way across to the small rock not far from the shore. I sit down on it and stare at the ground. Secretly I let a colossal grin split my face, but I can't let Toothless see it.

He's trusting me! He's trusting me more and more, and not once have I sensed him wanting to attack me! The grin that's tearing my face in two right now is partly from joy that he trusts me, and partly from hope that he will remember me once more.

Still staring intently at the ground, I scuffle my feet around in circles, trying uselessly to keep my excitement and happiness within me. When I finally manage to get my emotions under control, the dust clears and I see a line etched into the dirt. Where my other foot was swirling the ground is another line intersected by a few more.

Commencing the gentle swirling of the dirt once more, I see that quickly more and more lines continue to emerge, seemingly from nowhere.

When I am finished, I recognise the image immediately. How could I forget it?

It's Toothless. The first ever picture I drew of him, that first day in the Cove.

"What…" I whisper, trying to keep my voice low so Toothless is unable to hear me. "But I did this ages ago… how…?"

It's impossible, but apparently, in this world the impossible just became possible.

I quickly grab a stick from nearby and run it along the lines that seem so familiar to me now, making the indentations deeper and more pronounced, like they used to be. I could probably trace this image with my eyes shut; I don't need vision to see Toothless any more. I can feel tears breaking free of their ducts and making channels along my cheeks, but I don't care. These tears are for Toothless, and they are always welcome. I try hard not to sob, I don't want to show my sadness to Toothless for fear he'll misinterpret my emotions.

I'm trying so hard to be joyous at this point. After all, my best friend is getting back to who he used to be again!

But the drawing, like the dagger, brings back a flood of memories. And with each of the memories I see, a new pain stabs me as I am reminded of something else I have lost, some other aspect of Toothless that I no longer have.

As I force my eyes to stop focusing on the image, let them focus instead on the tears blurring my vision, all that happens is that the drawing becomes crystal clear in my mind, and memories anew flood back. I think about when I drew this picture for the very first time, when I sat here, terrified while Toothless loomed over my back, watching. How I forced myself not to look up, to pretend I hadn't heard him and just keep drawing.

How he drew a picture with that tree, and I stepped over the lines in a wonderful dance. How I held out my hand, and he trusted me enough to press his nose onto my skin. The sensation of warm scales on my skin for the very first time; the first time _any _Viking had felt scales on their palms properly.

All these thoughts rush through me in a whirlwind, and they make the tears flow with renewed vigour, because suddenly I think about how no matter what, we'll never be like we were again. Even if he remembers me, which is looking more and more likely by the minute, he'll still remember now, he'll remember not knowing me and trying to kill me. He'll look back on these memories with regret and hatred of himself.

Everything has changed, and no matter what, I can't get it back to where it was before. I can't erase these memories, I can't turn back time, and I can't do _anything _to make it all okay again.

And this feeling of helplessness, my inability to _fix _things, is the emotion surging through my body in waves.

**T**

From my position, head lying on the rough dirt, I can hear a loud scraping noise. I raise my head wearily, and see that the boy, or as he has asked me to call him, Hiccup, is sitting on the rock nearby doing something with his back to me. My curiosity piqued, I use some of my remaining strength to get to my feet and stumble over behind him.

When I reach a suitable viewpoint, I see that etched into the earth is my face. Cruder and more angular than my real features, but the likeness is unmistakeable.

"Do you recognise it? I drew this picture the first day we met, almost a year ago now." He has obviously sensed my presence, but his head remains down, almost obsessively going over the lines in the ground again and again, forcing the stick to gouge deeper furrows in the earth. Now I am closer to his small body, I can hear the slight sniffling and sobbing sounds he is making.

Is he… crying? Over a drawing?

I see him visibly shake, a sob emanating from him as he tirelessly pounds the earth with the stick.

"You don't understand, Night Fury. You don't have the memories that are making me this way right now. You don't… you… you don't…" He's shaking now, but determined to finish his sentence.

"You don't _remember_," he finishes savagely, poking the stick into the lines with excessive force.

I come around to the front of his body, and look at him. I'm hoping the look on my face says, _well, I __**want **__to remember. Tell me everything._

I'm not trying to get him to speak just to make him feel better. I've realised I genuinely want to know. I've been spending so much of my time recently in the dark, while everybody around me seems to be trying to invite me into the light when I won't come. And I'm finally sick of being oblivious. My natural curiosity has won out, and I want to know about these memories, these events, everything I no longer have any knowledge of. I want to know where the memories went, too. Maybe one day somebody will explain that to me as well.

My expression must have displayed my thoughts perfectly, because he visibly brightens and straightens on his perch.

"You want to remember?" he asks, his voice full of hope. I nod my head, indicating my assent. He smiles, and I see it's not a forced smile, like he's now bound to tell me. It's completely genuine. He's glad to be telling me.

Maybe it's because I've been refusing his truths for so long, and now I will listen to them at last, he has got his reward for waiting it out.

Instead of speaking while drawing, he stops, and looks me full in the face. I see his red eyes and tear- stained cheeks, and wonder if it is really I that has caused all of this emotion to come bursting forth.

"You've probably already worked out that I was the one who shot you down that night of the raid," he begins, fearlessly telling me facts that, had it been earlier than this, would have made me kill him where he sat.

"Well, I actually found you in the woods, and I let you go. But the bola had taken your tail fin. You couldn't fly on your own, so I helped you. Together we learned to fly, and together we defeated the Queen. But I've skipped a few steps."

"The first time I actually came down here, I gave you fish, but you still wouldn't let me touch you. I sat here when I knew I hadn't a chance of making contact with you, and I drew this." At this, he indicates the drawing by his feet.

"But it turned out that this drawing was what finally brought us together. You watched, and then you got a tree… that one," he adds, pointing over at a rotting and fallen tree, discarded carelessly on its side in one corner of this place. "And you drew me a picture." Hiccup stands up, and looks keenly at the floor around him. He uses his feet to scuffle the earth until I see more dips in the ground begin to appear. They're completely random and flow in strange directions all around the rock, but I know from his words that they're _my _lines, _my _drawings.

_I _drew these lines. I don't recall doing so, but the fact that at some point my past self etched these lines in the ground makes them important to me. I feel like they should be bringing back memories to me, but as much as I try to recall their importance, it seems tantalisingly out of reach.

Hiccup starts using the stick to etch the larger lines back into the ground once more, and I want to join him, but I want to let him bathe in his own memories alone at this point. I can see how important they are to him, even if they are now meaningless to me.

I watch as he draws, scratches away like there's nothing else in the world but the stick and the lines in the dirt. It takes him a fair while to rediscover all the original lines, but he perseveres and doesn't give up, even though when I occasionally catch a glimpse of his hand I see that it has been rubbed raw from the friction on the stick.

This moment is his, and his alone, to savour. I don't want to stumble in, unaware of his emotions. I just sit calmly at the edge of my masterpiece and see the joy that it brings to this bizarre little boy.

**H**

Even though my hands are aching and my muscles are screaming at me to stop, I push through it. I'm doing this for Toothless. And anything I do for Toothless has to be done to the best of my ability. I can't just stop; can't just give up because I am in pain. Giving up, that's what good friends do. They can run half the distance with their friend, but as soon as the going gets too tough, they just desert them. A great friend would keep running until their friend dropped, even if they are miles past exhaustion themselves. They would never desert their friend.

That's what separates the good friends from the best friends- the will to do absolutely anything for someone. And if I don't do this, then I am not worthy of being his friend any longer.

With each scratch in the ground, I think once more of Toothless. A million scratches, a million expressions. With each jab, I picture a new Toothless- happy, sad, contented, angry, caring, concentrating, dreaming, sleeping, laughing, smiling. Anything and everything that I can think of, they're all flashing up in front of my eyes.

I'm hoping that I'll start to see less of the angry, ignorant Toothless, and more of the content, cooing Toothless that I used to see. Before all this.

It's weird, how one simple event can change everything so dramatically. I guess some people would simply see it as an owner losing a pet, indeed, some people would have probably left Toothless to die that day in the forest, but I've never seen it that way. He's not a pet, and I don't own him. We are equal, and I know that if I were to be fatally wounded, he'd do the right thing for me too. Whether that would be healing my wounds and eliminating my memories of him, or just easing my suffering as I slip away, I know whatever choice he would make would be the right one. Sometimes you can't just accept something. You have to fight against it with every fibre of your being, do everything in your power and more to try and change the fate, change the passage of time.

I've often wondered if I control my own fate, or whether it's been decided for me since the moment I was born. But even if it's all been mapped out by someone else beforehand, I'm going to do what I can to make my life my own, and not the construct of someone else's whims.

Sometimes I wonder if we've got multiple fates, and the choices you make along the way decide which fate ends up becoming reality. Like when I found Toothless in the forest after I shot him down. I could have killed him, left him where he lay, or set him free. The choice I made has stayed with me to this day, and not for a single second do I regret the decision I made.

Toothless has shown me what true happiness is. And he's proved to me how true friendship can always win out, time and time again. When you think that nothing in your life is right, you can just look to your true friends, and you know that no matter how bad it gets, there's always a light in your darkness. He's comforted me and guided me more than he knows.

The thing is, I never had the chance to tell him any of this. And even though I have an incredible desire to just spill it all out right this second, or sometime in the near future, I have an equally strong force holding me back, telling me to wait. Telling me not to say anything to him.

Because if I do tell him everything, then when he no longer has me, he'll always think about how I loved him, and he'll never be able to get over my death. But… if I don't tell him, he'll forget who I was and he'll never know the truth.

And I'm not sure what I fear the most- being mourned too much, or being forgotten.

With each flashing face and conflicting emotion, I stab the earth with a renewed vigour, glaring down at it like it's the thing that holds the secret to my troubles.

But, of course, the only thing that can cure any one of my problems is Toothless, and he doesn't know me right now.

The tears are dropping now, spattering down onto the etched lines like raindrops on a stormy day. I think I'm almost at the end of the drawing, but I daren't look up, because I don't want to show my feelings so openly to Toothless right now.

Because as much as he is my best friend, right now he's just another stranger to me, and I hate it when strangers can see weakness in me.

Keeping my head down, I pause momentarily to survey my work. I'm now standing at the edge of the drawing, and I can see it is whole and visible once more. The intricate swirls and random patterns may just seem like some lines to one man, but to me they mean far more than any words can express.

They symbolise our friendship, the mutual trust and the tests we have put each other through. They show how trust can be built through just a few actions and activities; no words are needed. They show how no matter how deep your friendship goes, or how long it's been since you've met, there's always the magic of that first meeting hidden just under the surface, ready to surprise you again and again, and remind you about just how lucky you are that the fates were on your side that day.

That's just a tiny number of the things that these lines mean to me, and I feel a stab of guilt in my chest as I remember that the creator of this art has no memories, no emotions, no _anything _connected to these swirls.

The thought of Toothless causes me to wonder where he's actually ended up. I've been staring at the floor for what seems like an eternity now, but I can't see his paws anywhere. He's… disappeared.

Then, suddenly, I feel hot breath down the back of my tunic, and I'm transported back in time, back to our first contact.

_I'm standing here, feeling the Night Fury's hot breath huffing on the nape of my neck. I'm terrified, but then I turn to face it, and the exhalation ruffles my fringe slightly. Looking up, I see how the eyes of the beast are placid, calm; he means me no harm. Not anymore. I see nothing but absolute trust in his demeanour, and I hope that my body language says the same to him._

_I reach out my hand, slowly extending it towards his snout. The dragon flinches backwards; shying away like my hand is a knife or another dangerous object. I just hold my stance, and then, almost as if my body is acting of its own accord, I lower my head, and avert my eyes, instead staring at the ground, and the furrows I have had to negotiate to make it this close to this mighty being._

_I wait a few seconds, but it seems like an eternity. Then… the warm, scaly touch of the dragon's snout brushes my fingertips. A spark of power ripples through my body, making the hairs on my neck stand on end. My soul surges with the knowledge that I am the first _ever _Viking to do this- the first ever Viking to forge a bond of _friendship,_ not fear, with a dragon. _And_ the most powerful dragon known to us, at that! I force my head to stay down, but I can't suppress my overwhelming desire to look up for long._

_When I glance up, I see his eyes closed, and his body relaxed. My hand still rests firmly on his nose; the first threads of friendship have already been forged._

_Another few seconds pass, then he opens his eyes, shakes his head, narrows his pupils and swishes away; the moment is lost._

Though the moment has long passed now, I can still replay it in my mind with a clarity far outstripping any other memories I have. It was the pivotal moment in my life. Who knew that one touch, one brushing of being against another could change so much?

To whatever fates decided those events should transpire that day, I am eternally grateful.

The warm air keeps hitting my back, and I just want to stand here forever, never moving, always joyful.

**T**

My breath has been gently falling on his back and neck for a while now. But if he's just content to stand there, then I am content to wait until he wants to move.

I know in my soul that this is the right thing to do. It feels so right… and familiar. Somewhere in my subconscious, I know that the motions I am making now, the position I stand in- I've done it all before. And there's another thing compelling me to do this. Trust. At every turn, I thought that the boy would betray me; he'd try and control me, own me, or kill me. But he didn't. There's something much more powerful than trust within Hiccup that's making him do all these things for me, and I want to know what it is.

My inner flame is white hot and burning higher than ever before. I don't know what is fuelling it; perhaps it is the happiness and care of this boy that is helping my flame to grow to such immense sizes.

Finally he turns, and I stare deep into his eyes, the colours of which are so similar to my own. I'm finding that as the minutes pass I am becoming more and more fond of this boy, and the reason for my care is sliding ever closer to being discovered. He holds out his hand, and at first I flinch nervously, unsure about this boy even though I have placed my complete trust in him previously and he has not failed me once. But my body recovers, and I stand strong as his small palm creeps ever closer to my head.

He tries to lower his gaze, to drop his head down to the floor, but as soon as I see this motion I snort, and he keeps eye contact with me. I want him to see the expression in my eyes; I want him to see me as an equal.

The seconds feel like hours as his hand gets tantalisingly close to my snout. I hold the position for a few moments longer, savouring the contact we have without any physical contact, then I push my nose those last few millimetres and my snout touches his fingertips.

It's as if before this moment, I haven't really been living, but now it's like I've been reborn. Instantly, electricity surges through me as I hold his gaze, paralysed in this position. I realise that I was wrong. My true reason for living, the thing that has kept my heart beating in my chest and the blood flowing through my veins between when I woke up and now, is not anger. It is not hatred or fury. It is not friendship or curiosity.

It is care.

The tiny spark of care, which has been within me from the moment I awoke, and I have never known its origin, has been the driving force behind everything. The tiniest spark, at first seemingly insignificant, I now acknowledge as what's driven me to this point. And with that realisation comes a new beginning. I can start anew, pull the reset lever.

As I stare for seconds that have lengthened into hours, Hiccup's eyes grow deeper, and I find that there are many swirling emotions hiding in their depths that I did not see before.

_Hey, Toothless. _His thought- speech rages through my mind like a lightning bolt. I widen my eyes even further, and my flame threatens to explode from my chest as I see the knowing grin spreading across his face.

And… that's it. It's like a switch has been thrown in my brain. My flame surges through my mind, unlocking all the memories that have caused so many sensations of familiarity. Suddenly everything I used to know is back where it should be, where I can dig it up and remember it. These memories were buried so deep, it took all that Hiccup has done for me and my inner flame to dig them up again.

Now memories flood out, overwhelming my brain with sights and emotions and smells and exploding all my senses at once. I see the smiling face of the boy right in front of me, his hazel eyes bright and full of life. I see me surging through the skies, flipping and soaring, guided by the boy. I see the Queen bearing down on me, and shooting a fireball into her mouth. I see the huge club tail bearing down on me, and diving into an inferno after Hiccup. . The effect is so powerful I want to close my eyes and just let it wash over me privately, but I hold my eyes open, keeping my eyes locked on his.

I see everything. But… there's one thing missing. I still don't know why I needed to break down these barriers that prevented me from remembering.

_Hiccup? _I think, and he nods, the smile growing wider by the second. For the first time, I sense his inner flame, and I can feel them merging to become one super entity, one colossal body, stronger together than it could ever be apart. I don't want this moment to end. I just want the world to stop, time to stand still, so I can keep staring deep into the eyes of my best friend and saviour forever.

_Toothless!_ he yells, embracing me with those little, lively hands.

Especially since it was _his_ smile, _his_ eyes, his _passion _for me, that was the key to my memories. And I'll _always_ be in his debt. For making me remember. For not giving up on me, even when I refused any offers of truth. For all the unspoken words that meant so much, and for everything he's done for me and more.

I can never thank him enough for what he's done for me.

* * *

**A/N I hope I gave this scene the justice it deserved, and I really hope you enjoyed reading it. Please let us know what you think!**


	19. Anything

**This is LesserWraith and Absi B's chapter... and, in a way, yours. Have fun!**

* * *

Time slows down, moments snap in time as every little part of life finally falls into place. I do not know which one of us embraced each other first. Everything is just a starry blur, a massive flow of feelings slowly wiping away the past sadnesses and fears that have tormented me for so long, like water erasing a smudge of dirt on a pure metal. His eyes, green and intense, stare at me, and never leave my shaking body.

"Toothless..." I say, bursting into tears as I reach my arms around his neck, melting into his warmth and scales, sinking into his thoughts as he purrs quietly at my hug.

_Hiccup…_

As I continue to cry, Toothless's words fade away, letting me continue to cry and cry. After so long, after so much, even Toothless is at a loss of what to say. He only manages to croon softly and nuzzle my back with his snout.

It is like reuniting with a long-lost friend; it is like reuniting with your missing half. It is like discovering what was gone.

It feels like it never happened. It feels like everything I did, everything that mattered, never did. Nothing matters more than right now, just being in Toothless's arms, letting his care connect with mine.

_Hiccup… I..._

"Everything's alright, Toothless," I say, my hands gripping Toothless like a lifeline. As a lifeline.

_I… I'm sorry that I made you go through all that,_ he says quietly. _You must hurt a lot._

"It wasn't your fault, Toothless," I answer, patting his back gently. "None of it was."

He croons quietly, like he knows that it was.

_I… I nearly killed you... several times. Ugh… the thought's making me shudder._

"It's okay," I assure him. "You never meant it."

He pulls away from me, crooning softly. It's not a reassuring croon, or a one that shows happiness.

I had these vivid thoughts. I wanted to kill you, tear you apart… it scares me. I'm sorry-

It's one that shows sincerity.

Toothless warbles in surprise as I jump back into his embrace, scratching at his back and causing him to purr happily.

_Ah! Hey! That tickles!_ Toothless laughs, squirming quietly as my hands scratch his scales fiercely, my mind determined to keep his thoughts away from the painful memories that begone.

"Don't be so down, Toothless," I say happily, pulling away from him again and bouncing up and down on the soles of my feet enthusiastically. "Everything's fine now."

_I still owe you an apology,_ Toothless protests, whimpering quietly. I stop jumping and look at his eyes. His sincere, opt peripherals of care.

"You don't need to give me one," I say, smiling madly. "You'll have loads of time for me to screw up and then our apologies will cancel each other out."

_I still owe you one,_ he insists, his ears flattening and his eyes going wide._ It's a lot to keep in my mind, all that I did to you._

"It's a lot on my mind, too, knowing that what you're trying to give me isn't of your faults," I grumble.

Toothless grins mischievously at these words of mine.

_All the more reason for me to apologize,_ he says, prancing towards and landing squarely in front me. After a moment's pause, he regurgitates a fish, the little thing landing into my hands.

I stare at him as his ears perk up and his teeth retract.

"Really?" I ask, looking at him with a weak smile.

_Consider it my gift of apology,_ he coos. Then he licks me full on the face. _And that, too._

"Um, I'll pass on the fish, thanks," I mumble, but Toothless answers with a whimper.

_If you don't eat it, my apology isn't fulfilled,_ he fake pouts. _I'll feel guilty._

I look at the fish.

"You've got to be kidding me," I mutter, staring at the fish with mild disgust. Of all the things that Toothless could have given me…

He gave me the very same gift that he first gave me. When I first gave him life.

"Here goes, then..." I say, taking a huge bite into it in front of Toothless's staring eyes. The fish, like any raw meat, tastes, well, _raw,_ but there is something in this food that makes me understand that, as you endure through the harsh rawness of life, the sweetness of time will gradually seep in before long.

I force the fish into my mouth, trying hard not to gag in front of Toothless. I nearly choke on it, my mouth protesting at its horrid smell and taste. I shove it down my throat as fast as I can. I'm panting by the time the fish moves on from my mouth.

Toothless croons happily.

"There," I mutter, wiping my tongue with my tunic. "Happy, you useless reptile-"

Toothless knocks me clean to the ground, licking me excessively as my face soon becomes thoroughly soaked with dragon saliva.

"There." He licks me happily. "Make sure you're happy." He licks me again. "And that, too."

He gets off me, purring happily as I try to wipe off the dragon enzymes.

_Apologies are like gifts, Hiccup,_ Toothless coos, his eyes shining in the early light._ When given, it makes both the giver and receiver happy._

I smile at Toothless happily (and silently), causing Toothless to croon with uncertainty.

_...And they're sort of hard to come by,_ Toothless continues awkwardly. _Um, and they come from special occasions._

I continue to smile at Toothless happily. The best friend ever, the willingly overprotective dragon, the powerful fighter whose strength is always for the better.

_...So… yeah. I'm glad that you're okay,_ Toothless finishes.

I don't stop smiling.

_Uh... am I supposed to hug you now...?_ he asks, pawing the ground nervously.

"You're so awkward, Toothless," I say, hugging him gently as he croons. "I can't wait for you to get back to Berk. I bet all the other dragons are going to miss you."

It's not like I care about them, Toothless mutters. They're too noisy.

"Then who do you care about?" I ask curiously. "Any special someone? Any shining Night Fury?"

Toothless pauses for a long, long, time.

"Toothless?"

His eyes stare into the distance, and he doesn't blink when I wave my hand in front of him.

"Uh, Toothless?"

**T**

_Which one are you talking about?_ Changewing asked me, flapping his wings excitedly as we hid behind a large rock.

_Keep talking and you won't get to know,_ I muttered, trying to make myself as still as I could, by front paws perching on top of the rock, the rest of my body lying downwards from thereon. In the nightlight, I am invisible to the elements.

Well, except for the annoying, overgrown, annoying, flying, annoying reptile next to me.

_Ooh, it's the Nadder with the star mark, isn't it?_ he smirked, nodding his overgrown head towards the star-marked Nadder, who was tending to her massive wings not far away.

_No, you idiot,_ I said. The Nadder flew back towards the nest, barely missing us as we ducked down. _She's not here yet._

_Then who...?_ he began, but froze right away as he saw a sparkling wink in the moonlight, dashing towards the cliff at high speed, scattering the winds and dividing the line between pretty and beautiful. She landed in front of cliff gently, her feet bending easily as she slowly laid down to rest, the moon alongside her as she scorched the ground.

We both watch Hikari, the Shining One, quietly, neither of us daring to make a single noise.

I take in her body as she sleeps, her back rising and falling perfectly with the rest of her body, her wings covering her like an elegant blanket covering a majestic queen, waiting for her King to arrive and take her away from the nest, have children, and return to show the world that Night Furies still truly thrive in this world as dragons in majesty.

After staring at her for forever, I force my eyes to tear away from her, which proves to be almost impossible, with her sparkling scales that reflected in the moonlight, which earned her the name. Not many dragons are given such graceful names. My given name, Hitori, meaning alone, is a name that I generally earned over time being solitary and antisocial- it was not because I was famous or good in any way. In fact, dragons loathed me because I punished them severely.

Guess who tends to them when they're all done.

I could never compare to her. I'm black and she's white. I'm the absence of everything she is. Kindness, elegance, empathy.

_Let's go,_ I huff sadly, turning away and taking off towards the nest. Night Furies like to sleep in solitude, so it's so surprise that she chooses the cliff over the nest.

_Dude, you have, to, like, get her with you,_ Changewing says enthusiastically, swinging and doing loops around me._ Like, she's really pretty._

_I know that better than you,_ I say gloomily, my wings flapping slowly as they made their way back.

_Night,_ he said, the only person who didn't call me Hitori, _I'm telling you, you have to ask her out. You can't just stand and watch from behind a rock all your life, you know._

_Shut up,_ I answered stoutly. The answer was simple and needed no evidence. I was nothing to her. She was everything to me. A dumb love story that would make anyone cringe.

_No, like, you, really need to,_ he urged. _If you like her, she's the one for you._

_Can't you mind your own business?_ I muttered irritably, the silent pain stabbing in further and further.

_Well, you better hurry and claim her, before some other Night Fury passes the nest by and asks her out,_ he said flatly.

I spun around in mid-air, nearly crashing with Changewing in the process.

_What?!_ I exclaimed, my eyes widening in shock.

_Duh, it's obvious,_ Changewing said matter-of-factly. _This place might not have a lot of your kin, but trust me, not a lot isn't nothing. The chances of one appearing grows by day, and you're getting no profit from that._

I thought about it for a while. It's true what he said. In fact, Hikari herself found out this nest when she unintentionally crossed by these lands.

I'll try, I said. Sometime.

_Promise,_ Changewing said, reaching out his wing as an offer of promise.

I paused again.

_Promise,_ I said, hitting the tip of my wing with his. He did the same again.

_Make sure you stick to it,_ he snickered. _Don't go after the Nadder or something._

I was young, and she was young, and I wanted her.

It was something even Changewing knew.

And it would be something I would make her know, too.

**T**

My mind flashes blindly, pictures of my beloved rewinding themselves over and over in my head. Being a Night Fury, scarred memories do not heal; they come back to torment me ever so often, refreshing itself over and over again as I fail to find inner peace. Her wings, the way she flew in the air, the sparks of her igniting fire; they were all little things that combined together to make the gigantic feeling of affection.

Which makes it agonizingly painful to know that she no longer exists to know of my desires.

"Toothless?" Hiccup asks again, staring at me intently. "Earth to Toothless? Hiccup to Toothless?"

**I know that she was just another dragon… but she was everything to me.**

"Toothless? It's me, Hiccup…"

**She was everything. She lived in the past. She does not exist now, and…**

"Um, Toothless, I'm starting to get worried…"

**She never showed the empathy and altruism that Hiccup had.**

"Are you sure you're okay?"

**Has.**

I shake my head gruffly, my eyes turning to focus on the concerned boy in front of me.

_I'm fine, Hiccup,_ I say slowly. _Of course I am._

"Didn't feel like it," Hiccup muttered, pulling me in for a hug. "You were as still as a rock. You still sort of are."

And will.

_You're so awkward sometimes,_ I joke, pulling away from him.

"Yeah, yeah-"

**H**

An arrow whizzes past me, landing right next to Toothless, who jumps away at the last possible moment.

"What-"

Toothless's eyes slit. He lets out an angry roar, turning around to face the source of the attack.

"Get away from that Night Fury, Hiccup," my father's voice booms out from the cliff of the cove, loud and determined. "Let me take care of this."

"What's your problem, dad?!" I yell, looking daggers at him. "You could have hurt him!"

He did hurt me, Toothless growls, showing a small wound where the arrow grazed the side of his body.

My concern turns to anger, my anger turns into rage.

"DAD!" I roar, charging at him with blind fury. I don't know how I'm going to reach him, I'm going to get my hands on him, and hurt him. I want to make him pay for hurting my friend. I want to make him pay for trying to ruin every single interaction between us, from the very start. I wanted to tell him that everything, everything I did for Toothless was, is, will be for Toothless, but he's never listened. And he's going to pay.

I dodge an arrow shot my way- as if I'd expect anything less from my father.

I reach the cliff, and begin to climb. My legs struggle to find a hold on the slippery soil, but I continue my ascent.

He's going to pay. He's going to hate me for the rest of my life, and I don't even care. I don't. Even. Care.

Just as my fingers clamp the top of the ledge, I'm yanked up by an enormous hand, and pulled aside, my body landing on the ground. Below, I see Toothless, an arrow in his leg, wincing slightly as his eyes stare at my father.

And me.

Toothless! Oh, no. No. I left him back there. I should have got on to him, left… no…

"Toothless!" I call. A croon is the only thing I hear as response from him. I try to connect his thoughts with mine, but I'm too far from him.

"Hiccup." Stoick growls at me, his eyes slitting to rival Toothless's. "That dragon is evil. I'm going to kill it."

"He's Toothless, dad!" I yell, stating what couldn't be more obvious, but to such an oblivious fool, I could have said nothing at all.

"He's nothing but a pest to me," Stoick says, discarding his bow and pulling out a sword. He jumps into the cove, the ground shaking as he lands, advancing slowly towards the growling Toothless. "And pests must be taken care of."

"No!" I yell, rushing towards the edge of the cliff and staring at the two in shock. Two mortal enemies, human and dragon, archrivals, their opposites for life.

_Leave it to me._

Toothless looks up to me, his eyes showing anger and concern, a growl emanating from him.

"I-"

Toothless fires a blast of fire at me, engulfing my body as I struggle to break free of the sinking paralysis that accompanies the flames. I try to move my arms, my legs, my feet, but they've all frozen in place- I can't even speak. My body stands in an upright position, unable to move at all.

I'll sort this one out myself, he growls from below. You're not putting yourself into danger because of me.

He watches warily as Stoick faces him, weapons raised in combat.

It's Stoick that makes the first move, his massive axe swinging ahead of him. Toothless steps backward quickly, blasting the ground in front of him, only to miss due to the chief's own swift sidestep. The human pulls out and knife, throwing it at the growling Toothless, who ducks, the knife lodging itself into the cove wall.

Toothless dives for the human, the latter jumping backwards and landing a slash not far from where Toothless lands. They circle each other slowly, their eyes locked in mutual hate.

As the two of them fight, the two of them are a blur of fire and metal, swiping and dodging each other as they circle around their arena, roars and grunts alike in the fight. Occasionally, I hear the yelp as a knife grazes a scale, or a talon slashes the skin. I only stare at the two of them, one wounded, one hurt, both determined to go for the kill.

A sudden screech rips from Toothless's mouth, tearing through the air as Toothless kicks Stoick off of him, only to feel a large knife planted into his back.

"Toothless!" I scream in my head, watching in pain as he fires more and more bolts of fire at Stoick, all of them to be dodged by the person I thought was my father.

There is no way that this is the person that has raised me all this time; to me, to Astrid, to the village.

He is a beast.

Like all of us. Us that we call 'humans'.

Stoick continues to chase after Toothless, the latter wincing at every step, but managing to land shots one by one.

"Somebody, please… stop this..."

A massive axe is thrown at Toothless, the blade spinning through the air in a circular motion as it makes its way towards its undeserving target. Toothless blasts it into pieces, the debris rebounding into Stoick's skin. A sharp part of the axe sticks into his arm, where blood starts oozing from the wound. He tears it out and advances towards Toothless.

**T**

_Oh, you think this is all I've got?_ I growl angrily, slashing angrily at the ground in front of me. _This is nothing._

I spring into action again, dashing towards him quickly. I catch him off guard and send him flying into a large rock. I'm on him within seconds after that, pinning his massive body to the ground with all four feet, my snout directly in his way.

_You try and screw with me or Hiccup,_ I growl angrily, _And you'll feel a lot more burdens than just from being a chief-_

Stoick shoves me off him, my powerful wings steadying my body as I land not far away. I feel another searing pain as another sharp object lodges itself into my leg. I look up just in time to see the Chief, yet another bow held out at arm's length, fire another arrow at me.

The arrow explodes into million of shards, its existence wiped away from the universe. In another quick shot, the bow follows.

_Fight me, you beast,_ I growl, feeling the knife's pain in my back stabbing at me periodically. _C'mon._

Stoick discards the broken remains of his weapons and dives straight for me. The knife and arrows embedded into me causes me to strain at every swipe, every duck, every shot, but I do not falter, and nor does Stoick.

A huge hand comes slamming down on my snout, causing me to close my eyes in pain. In response, I take a blind swipe at my front, awarding me with a sound of splattering blood as my sharp tailfins meet my target.

_Ah, the smell of blood…_ I recall the memories of hunting and killing the weak. _Come to me._

I open my eyes, watching as Stoick clutches his left arm in pain, blood flowing out of it quickly. I send another blast at him, causing him to jump out of the way- and reopen the wound.

_Die,_ I smirk. _Die like an animal._

I watch him growl in pain, my feet taking small steps toward him slowly, wanting to drag out his misery as long as possible.

_You thought it was cool to screw with me, huh?_ I mock, my tail forming another cut in his leg with a quick swipe._ You thought it was gonna be fun?_

I circle him, his groans getting louder as his wounds do not heal themselves as fast they should. Wounds heal over time, but if they keep on being reopened, then they never will.

I prowl around him, making sure that he is unable to do such. As I prowl around, the corner my eyes land on a set of scratches on the sand.

_Hiccup's picture, _I think to myself._ Better not mess with that._

My hind leg directly avoids stepping onto the drawing Hiccup drew earlier, just as a massive fist slams me into the wall not far behind-

**H**

-driving the knife deep into his back, where his organs are certain to be. I see his eyes go wide for several seconds, slit, then close. His body slips back down onto the ground, landing on his feet. Suddenly, I can move again, and the first thing I do is scream.

"TOOTHLESS!"

My mind freezes, my thoughts shoved out of my mind as my body tries to process again and again what has been presented to me.

And I process none.

"TOOTHLESS!" I scream, getting to my feet as Stoick limps towards the wall slowly. I feel my feet reach the reach the bottom of the cove, my legs buckling from the impact.

He reaches over, pulls the knife out of the silent, unresponsive Toothless, and raises it high above his own head.

"Die, you worthless dragon," Stoick whispers.

"**NO!**" I scream, my mind going completely blank. In the few moments that my consciousness remains, I remember doing these few things: throwing myself in front of the dagger, feeling something cut deep into my shoulder, shoving my injured father to the ground, standing in front of Toothless, hugging Toothless's snout, and speaking to him.

"Toothless, you're okay, right?" I ask, holding his snout gently, not caring for the blood that continually gushes from my shoulder. "Speak to me, Toothless!"

Toothless makes no sound.

"Toothless. Say something, Toothless!"

Toothless does not move.

"Toothless- Toothless- don't leave me, bud!" I yell desperately, hugging his snout tightly. "C'mon, Toothless!"

When his eyes do not open, I move to check his snout.

"Toothless, get up," I plead. "Please."

He isn't breathing.

"Toothless…"

I let go of his snout, which flops down on the ground silently in front of me.

"Toothless..."

"TOOTHLESS!"

I swear I see a flash of red streaking into the cove as my mind flashes violently, my vision completely jammed- as- as-

"TOOTHLESS!"

I- I- what- no- I-

A huge splurt of blood escapes my shoulder.

TOOTHLESS!

NOO!

NOOO!

My mouth paralyses, my mind goes blank, and my eyes flare with the fiery pain that once again threatens to overcome me entirely.

And my vision goes red.

TOOTHLESS!

**TOOTHLESS!**

**T**

…

…

...

Nng…

Rgn…

What… why?

**H**

TOOTHLESS!

Wh- no- this can't- this- this- this isn't-

TOOTHLESS!

My shoulder- no, screw it-

Toothless-

I- I- he- _Toothless-_

TOOTHLESS!

**T**

Nn…

...

...

Hiccup…

...

I…

**H**

Keep yourself together- keep yourself together- don't lose it, don't lose it-

TOOTHLESS!

He's going to be okay- he's not dead, he's not going to die-

Just- just- hang in there! I- I'll- do something!

I- I- what do I do?!

What do I do?!

**T**

Hiccup…

…

…

I...

…

…

I'm sorry.

**H**

Toothless…

Toothless...

Toothless…

_Toothless!_

I open my eyes slowly, registering the land around me. I didn't realize that I was on my knees, my hands gripping my head violently. Blood is dripping everywhere, and the pain has finally begun to sink in, stabbing and burning viciously as the metal grazes the liquid within. I have no energy, no sense of anything.

And no best friend.

I soon realize that Toothless's paralyzing flame must have worn off not long ago. Which was why I managed to get down to here in the first place.

"Dad..." I say, looking forward- looking straight at Toothless's body; behind me, the unconscious Stoick, the man clutching both of his legs in pain; to my side, at my drawing on the ground.

It remained untouched. Even the stick that I left there hasn't moved.

Toothless…

Why?

Everything hits me in a shade of monochrome, my mind numbed and paralyzed from all that has happened. When your brain is unable to take anything further, it sends you into overdrive.

That just happened.

And then, it wakes you up, and fails to recover itself. Nothing feels like anything matters now.

This is now.

Maybe I'll just die here. The wound is stinging slightly, and blood is bursting from it continually. Maybe I'll just… lay down. And maybe I'll never wake up again.

Maybe I'll be with Toothless.

I want to feel sad. I want to scream, cry, shout, do anything- but I've exhausted myself of every possible thing that I could do to express my emotions. Right now, nothing is appealing nor disgusting, nothing is good nor bad, nothing is depressing nor appealing.

And nothing will I become.

I just want to die now. The dullness of my mind may have killed my emotions, but I still have empathy left.

We all do.

Why, Toothless?

Why?

Why am I still alive?

The knife's not far away, if I recall… maybe I can end it. I'm not feeling anything anyway.

Maybe, I'll...

_"..."_

A small breeze passes me, and I swear that it feels warm. And comforting.

Huh?

"_..._"

It makes me feel… better. Even though I shouldn't. Not when Toothless…

"..."

The wind… is it trying to tell me something?

"_..._"

The wind suddenly dies down, and is replaced with the terrifying sound of screeching as a huge Nadder, followed by a huge Zippleback, a Gronckle, and even a Monstrous Nightmare land into the cove.

"Toothless?"

"My god! He's not moving!"

"HICCUP!" Astrid screams from behind me.

"Dude, you're seriously hurt," Snotlout says, a hint of worry in his voice. "Go back to Berk."

"The Chief is in pretty bad shape, too," Fishlegs says.

"Don't you see what he did to Toothless?" Tuffnut growls, refusing to get off the Zippleback. "We're better off if we let him die here."

"We've got to get Hiccup and Toothless to safety first," Astrid says urgently. "Hiccup- you're bleeding-"

"I'm staying here," I say dazedly, the blood loss beginning to affect my brain. "I'm not going anywhere without Toothless."

Everyone turns at my voice. And, from what I can see, there's a long silence. Which I don't care of, for all the time in the world I would use to look at Toothless. To watch and hope that he would wake up, and give me a happy lick.

Astrid turns to the other people sternly. Everyone averts her gaze.

"Get Stoick out of here. Now."

"But Hiccup- he's in danger of-"

"Get out!"

The twins silently load Stoick onto the Zippleback, the two heads protesting as the weight upon them falls quite hard. However, with the Nightmare's and the Gronckle's support, they manage to lift Stoick and their respective friends up into the air, the dragons lifting the humans lifting the human.

"Hiccup… what happened?"

"Toothless. He fought Stoick. He got launched into the wall." I point to a part of the wall, where the blood had stained. "Because..."

"Because what?"

"Because… of me."

Astrid goes silent. Everything feels so monochromatic now. I feel like I'm fading…

"Hiccup, we've got to get you back!"

"I'm not… leaving… Toothless," I say quietly.

"Hiccup, c'mon-"

"Toothless… is everything…"

"Hiccup, you'll die if you don't get some help soon!"

"I'm not leaving Toothless," I say slowly. "Never."

"He…" she begins.

"Leave me here," I say. "Leave me. I can... manage."

Astrid's eyes go wide.

"Hiccup- you might die-"

"I... don't... care," I whisper. "Not... leaving... Toothless."

My mind is finally on the verge of fading away.

"Hiccup…" she says, getting up slowly. "Wait here. I'll go get the healer, alright?"

"Th… anks."

As she flies away on Stormfly, I turn to face Toothless one last time. I use all the strength I have left to lift Toothless's snout up to my shoulder, and place it there gently. I wrap my hands around his neck, and I swear I feel that warm wind brush me by once again.

"I love you, bud," I whisper, falling downwards into the ground as everything finally goes black.

"_..._"

**T**

I'm flying. I'm flying through the clouds, and I'm letting the coldness of the whites sink into me. We're passing through a rather cloudy part of the sky, and it feels like the clouds that chill and comfort me seem to go on forever. My eyes are not any better off closed than they are open in this whitely terrain; the clouds encompass everything.

The funny thing is, I can tell that the Lights are above me, glowing green and blue in their magical properties, but I can't actually move my head. They dance around, taunting me with their beauty, but I cannot do anything to reach it.

I cannot look up or down. I can't move anything apart from my wings, actually. All I can do is fly forward into the neverending clouds. It feels like I'm not flapping my wings at all; I'm just flying, flying, flying.

It feels like Hiccup is the controlling my flight at the moment. I feel nothing. I know nothing. I can only rely on Hiccup, whose presence I cannot feel, to stay in the air, fly through this blind, white paradise that never seem to end.

**H**

I am flying. Well, I think I am. I can't see anything here, but the rushing winds and the chilliness of the clouds as of lo are feelings exclusive to flying- so it must be true that I am flying.

I remember dad's warnings not to be late for dinner, and I remember Toothless's newfound ability to speak. I remember that we're on a flight through the clouds, and that Toothless was the one who suggested the idea. I remember all the things that I wanted to talk to him about, now that he could talk, and all the things he might have wanted to tell tell me.

In short, I am flying. On Toothless, who I cannot feel. Maybe it's the cold.

I should start talking. Otherwise I might freeze to death.

**T**

I feel something in my mouth. It's wet, and it's sticky. It's oozing in my the side of my snout, but from where then I don't know. All I know is that it's coming in a steady flow, and every drop of it is making me more and more aware of what's around me. It's giving me energy, too.

"Toothless, would you care if I died?" Hiccup asks out of the blue.

It's a stupid question, with an answer that even he knows. Why is he asking this?

I let out a small growl, but I still do not feel anything. I feel like I'm getting warmer... I might even feel something now...

"I annoy you all day long. I never seem to know when you want to fly. I never know what you want, and you have to ask me. I should know what you want, but I don't. You must be sick of me a lot of the time."

_It's not like that,_ I say irritably. Surprised at my ability to communicate, I continue. _Being friends isn't anything like that. We make sacrifices for each other, and do the best we can to not screw up the relationship. It's not like it's our duty to make the other person happy all the time, Hiccup. That's like some weird servant thing._

I feel a gentle breeze brush against me. It's weird, because we're flying in the air, and little breezes shouldn't really be felt. But here it is, and it's warm. It's making me warmer. No, not just warmer. More aware. It's like my senses are sharpening, and I recognize more and more of my surroundings.

**H**

I process Toothless's words, and as I do, I notice something. I can't feel my shoulder. It's like it's gone numb or something. Like, there's nothing... I can't move my head too see it, either.

He says that we make sacrifices for each other.

I have always made sacrifices for him- I have sneaked out of the village to see him back when dragons were enemies, not friends, and I like to go steal fish from the port just so Toothless can be happy- even if I get caught and yelled at, the satisfaction on Toothless's face as he chewed the fish was often more than enough for me to forget it.

"Still… I feel bad for making you annoyed. Or bad, in any sort of way."

**T**

I let out a small flare in annoyance. It's not a deadly flame, like the ones that I shoot enemies down with. It's a healing flame- the same kind of flame that I used to heal Hiccup's leg with. Its healing properties can restore body parts, nerves, even lost blood. I use it when I'm showing exasperation in front of Hiccup, because normal flame would hurt him. The healing flame takes away a bit of my energy, but I'm fine with that.

I thought it would have scattered some of the clouds, but they do not sway in the slightest as we continue our darkless journey.

_We tolerate one another, Hiccup,_ I reply. _It's a sign of our friendship. We don't care about the little things that we hurt each other with without knowing it. There are just as many ways that we'd make each other happy as there are ways that we'd hurt each other, and it's enough that you don't choose the other half. When it comes to the big things, no matter how many times we hurt each other, we'll still always have each other's backs._

I feel Hiccup's hand rub my head. I purr appreciatively. It must be nice to have long hands. And fingers.

**H**

The sky is getting brighter. It's almost like we weren't in the clouds, but in some kind of land where night is day, and day is night. Maybe we've been flying so long, it's daytime already. Dad would be mad if we were out for the whole night...

I can feel my shoulder now, too. It feels warm... like fire. Hmm.

"Does that mean I hurt you a lot?" I ask.

When we hurt a close friend, we feel a guilt that amasses in our stomach. It never leaves, but it never really stays, either. It will fade with time, but the fastest way is through one's accepted apology. If they say that they do not hold anything against us, we feel relieved and the guilt is gone. And it's this trust and faith that we put into each other that brings and keeps us together, making sure that each time a friend hurts, we will always be there to help them. We feel their pain, and we understand their hardships.

_No,_ he says irritably. _It means that I'm close enough not to care. And besides, when friends hurt each other, they mean well. They want you to be better._

"Let me start: You eat too much fish."

_You complain too much. Besides, I'm supposed to be on a diet._

"You're too overprotective."

Toothless lets out a small flare. Even though he's flaring in front of him, I feel the healing flame's warmth. I can feel my blood circulating...

Still, when you're on a dragon's back, and pretty much need that back to survive, it's hard to think of how he might need my back one day, and how I'd be unable to help him.

"Easy for _you_ to say," I mutter. "_You're_ a strong and powerful dragon. I'm a boy that relies on you to survive."

_I rely on you to survive, too,_ he croons. _Where else would I be?_

I sigh. Not a sad sigh, not a happy sigh, but a sigh.

Everything, as of now, feels like a giant fantasy, where dreams have become true and have yet to cease. It feels like we can keep going on like this forever, and nothing would be of importance at all, except the feelings that we both felt when we were together. And it would be never end, and that it never, ever, will.

Of course, fantasies are not real.

But life is.

"I don't know how I got through without you. I don't even want to remember my life before… ugh, how everyone hated me," I mumble.

**T**

I warble.

_You were very well able to shoot me down and then befriend me, you know._

Hiccup goes silent at these words.

"How?"

_Because you were yourself,_ I croon. _You've never lost your sense of justice and care, even when given the choice between glory and infamy. You chose the latter, Hiccup, because you were strong. You knew you were doing the right thing, and that's why I trust you… with my life._

"With life?" he asks. I wish I had hands at the moment; I want to facepalm myself.

_Um, like, life? _I say. _My life? For you? _

Hiccup's hand pats me again. I warble.

"That's a bit undramatic, Toothless," he jokes.

I breathe another flare, and I swear that I hear Hiccup laugh.

"So… you'd be sad if I died, then," he says.

I perk my ears up.

_What?_

**H**

"I mean… is that what a friend is supposed to think? Is a friend supposed to feel sad that their friend is going to die?"

Toothless is silent.

"Like… what is a friend?" I ask, partially to myself. "Is it someone who stands by you all the time? Do they abandon you when their personal interests conflict with yours? Will they stay by your side, even in death?"

_I think that there are many kinds of friends,_ I hear Toothless coo. _There are good friends, then there are bad friends. Good friends are the ones that do the best for you, and the bad friends do what is the best for themselves._

"How do you know who is who, Toothless? How do you know that I am a good friend?"

…

"I think that you're a good friend. What do you think?"

_…We endure through trials, I guess, he replies slowly. /We prove our loyalties through the choices that happen before us when things arise._

"...Am I a good friend?"

...

"Toothless?"

..._No._

I nod.

"...I thought so. I'm a pretty bad-"

_You're the best friend I've ever known._

_"..."_

_..._

"...Toothless..."

_You heard me._

"...But... how?"

_The trials that we've gone through are more than enough to prove, Hiccup, that we are more than just playmates. Not a lot of people would risk their lives just to save a friend._

"Like you."

_And you._

"Me?" I ask.

_Yep. Best friends first,_ he warbles.

**T**

"Best friends…" he says. "Like you and me?"

_Like me and you,_ I croon.

"Like a human who annoys a dragon all day?"

_Like a dragon who follows a boy everywhere._

"..."

...

"..."

…

"I'd be sad if you died," he says quietly. "I don't want that to ever happen."

_Don't worry,_ I croon, nodding quietly. _I have healing flames. I can heal us if anything happens._

"You are, you mighty beast." Hiccup laughs, and I feel a soft hand nuzzling my side. "Time to go back to Berk now, I guess."

Suddenly, I feel a gust of warm wind against my body, and my senses are quickly rushing to.

_I guess so,_ I agree. _It's getting sort of warm here._

Hiccup smiles and lowers himself down to hug me.

"I'll never leave you, Toothless," he says happily, as we reach the end of the clouds.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

**H**

...

...

Nn…

Ow…

Where… what, when?

Where am I?

**T**

Rr…

Everything's such a fuzzy white…

Mm…

The air.

It's warm.

**H**

Nn...

My consciousness comes back to me slowly, and the first thing that I register, is grass. Soft, green, lush grass. Then there's the sun. The blinding, promising sun. I shut my eyes again, waiting for my other senses to come to.

**T**

Something's stirring inside me. It demands me to get to my senses. And I begin to feel more. I try, slowly, blindly, my left back leg, then my right back leg, then my tail.

And then there's grass. It's soft.

Where am I?

**H**

And then there's my arms. They're holding onto something. My arms feel around, my eyes not intent on opening, and I do not have a plan to open them soon.

Everything feels so… infinite now. I feel like I can just close my eyes forever and let the warm thing in my arms keep me warm and happy forever.

There's a small wind, too.

**T**

There's something on my snout. And around my neck, too. What dares try to challenge my personal space, anyway? Usually, this would be the time that I struck, with prey so close to my mouth.

But I don't strike it.

It's soft.

And I'm in terrible need of comfort right now. I feel so aching, I feel so warm, but inside, it's... cold.

**TH**

Hm. So warm… I wonder what this is.

It feels tender. It feels soft.

Slippery. The flesh is slippery, but it's also reassuring and promising.

And moving. It keeps on moving around, like it's searching for comfort.

**H**

"Mm..." I mumble, moving my head closer to the warm thing. Feels so familiar…

I feel like nothing can go wrong at the moment. Everything is at peace, and time has frozen to let me stay in this position, my body laying down peacefully, my arms encompassing warmth and security.

**T**

The soft thing embraces me. To my side, a round thing rests next to my snout. I move my head closer to it too.

This kind of warmth… Reminds me of…

Somewhere.

Something.

Someone.

**H**

I'm lying face down. My arms are hugging something.

Someone.

Nn… it's pretty scaly, too...

**TH**

It can't be…

It has to be…

_Hiccup?_

_..._

_..._

"...Toothless?"

_Hiccup!_

"Toothless! Bud! It's you!"

**T**

_Hiccup!_

My eyes fly open, the aches instantly gone from my head. My fixate on

the boy in front of me,

hugging me,

lying down on the grass,

crying,

laughing,

Hiccup.

**H**

"Toothless!" I say, opening my eyes slowly. A black dragon, a Night Fury-

"Toothless!" I say, unable to think of anything else.

_I'm here,_ he confirms. _I'm not going anywhere, either._ He turns around confusedly._ Is dinner ready?_

"Aww, Toothless!" I cry.

My arms wrap around him fully, watching as he gives me a small croon. He stands up, lifting me up to my feet in the process.

"Toothless," I breathe, pulling away from him. "You're- you're okay!"

_I've had better days,_ he jokes, looking around at the ground. Then he gives me a huge lick.

"Gah!" I say, laughing all the same as he gives me another really, really, long lick.

_Mm… my back hurts,_ Toothless complains, looking back at his back. _Was I sitting down too long?_

I move to his side, and I swear, my eyes never leave him as he too looks back at me.

"There..."

There's a small scar, much like a knife cut, running along his side. It feels like… like…

_Whoa._

Toothless nods towards a (large) blood stain onto the cove wall. It's as if blood had spurted from something quickly, the gooey liquid scattering like an explosion.

"That's..."

_It's at your feet, too,_ he says, and I look down and see an excessive amount of blood on the ground. It looks like it's been oozing out of something.

Out of something...

"Where did this come from?" I ask. For some reason, Toothless's eyes widen, then return to normal quickly.

_Nothing,_ Toothless finishes for me rather nervously. _Nothing, really._

As I watch the rays of dawn beam down on us, I swear I see a flash of red at the edge of the woods. It's there for a second, and then it's suddenly gone. Something tells me that it's not coming back. Something tells me that it's something familiar. But it's also telling me that it's not coming back.

….

...

..

.

The warm wind… the blood on the wall… the knife…

All of a sudden, my mind gives an involuntary lurch, and flashes of events drive back and forth in my head, unable to be stopped as I sink to the ground.

_I'll sort this one out myself-_

_Somebody, please… stop this…_

_Die, you worthless dragon-_

_TOOTHLESS!_

_TOOTHLESS!_

My thoughts are shoved back into reality as Toothless gives me a hard nudge to my side, causing me to wince back in pain. He watches, slowly, as I limp slowly back towards him.

"You remember too, right?" I ask.

_Everything,_ he replies. _I'm sorry, Hiccup._

I continue to sob into his side, his croons and warbles comforting me quietly. The sun rises higher and higher, signalling the sign of a new day, a new world, a new adventure.

_What happened after that?_ he asks quietly. _If you don't mind explaining, that is._

"You're trying to make me let out my thoughts, aren't you?"

_Maybe, _he warbles. _It'll make you feel better._

"Well... I sorta of, uh, took a blade hit for you," I say uncomfortably. Toothless is _not_ going to be happy. "But trust me, I'm fine-"

_Hiccup!_ he growls, pushing me away from him. His eyes slit in anger. _Even after I paralyzed you-_

"You would have died!" I yell, my eyes burning with pain. "I had to do what I could!"

_You nearly lost an arm!_ he growls. _Hiccup- don't ever do anything like that again. You're _never_ going to hurt yourself again because of me. Got it?_

"So you think that all this time, when I watched you in the arena, freed you from that hell, covered up your wounds, gave myself up to you when you tried to kill me, nearly got myself killed, I was doing it for myself?" I ask, my anger venting out in words unable to fathom into thoughts anymore. It was too much to take. "Who else do you think I was doing that for, if not _you,_ Toothless? Who else would I give so much for?"

In the silence that cuts through the air, Toothless's ears fall back, his eyes avoid looking at me, and I begin to feel incredibly guilty. Toothless has gone through so much, and I've been so useless trying to help him. He doesn't deserve this...

Surprisingly, I feel Toothless's snout nudging my chest, his wide green eyes staring up at me with a small croon.

_I'm sorry,_ he mutters. _I really am._

"It's not your fault..." I murmur. "You didn't do anything wrong..."

He pushes at my chest gently, a small whimper coming from him.

"It's alright, Toothless. Everything is."

He moves up and rests his snout on my shoulder, where he closes his eyes gently. Usually, when you apologize to someone, and you go up to them, you have to be sure that they are willing to accept it as an apology. You have to know that they are willing to reconcile with you, willing to take a hug and your arms. They have to be close enough with you, and you have to be close enough with them.

And there's no question when it comes to the two of us.

_I didn't want you to get hurt,_ he whimpers. It hurts me when I hear him do that, but I'm crying as well. So we're hurting each other and we're comforting at the same time, too. _I knew you'd try to come down to help me._

"I ended up saving your life," I say, sobbing slowly as I fall into into his soft side.

_And you nearly got yourself killed,_ he says. _I never wanted that to happen._

"Still," I say. "You're here with me. That's more than enough."

_What about Astrid?_ he asks sly, completely and utterly ruining the moment.

"Toothless!"

_It's written all over your face, _he says as if it was something that you said regularly (he sort of does).

He can be pretty blunt like that. Well, he usually is. But he's also blunt when you've just saved him from death and he's pretty sad.

"Shut up," I say, blushing wildly. I push him off, only to be licked by him wildly. Ugh, Toothless!

_It's no secret that you like her,_ he says with a warble. _Admit that you have been seduced by her wildly unattractive feminine looks._

"She's pretty hot," I protest. "She's not as bad as you think."

_Hey, I'm just being honest,_ he points out.

I groan.

Best friends. One of the only few people that you can openly talk about your love interests to.

"Speaking of which, Astrid showed up and took Stoick back to Berk," I recall slowly. "Oh, and I saw a flash of red. But that might have been my blood."

_Red…_ Toothless mutters quietly.

"Hm?"

_It's nothing,_ he says as I pull away from him. He licks at my shoulder gently, eyes full of concern, but there is no more blood flowing out. It even seems like it healed, really…

"How did we survive that?" I ask Toothless curiously. "I mean, I thought you were..."

_I honestly have no idea..._ Toothless mumbles. _Does it matter?_

"I guess it would be pretty useful in case you, like, get into trouble again-"

But he's already on top of me, licking me and giving me his Toothless look.

_Hiccup, don't you see? You went to extreme lengths to save me, even putting your life into Death's grasp to make sure I wasn't the one to die. You were giving up your life for me. You were giving death your life instead of giving up mine. You denied death's satisfaction, Hiccup. You showed not agony and pain in death, but the altruism that disgusts those who revel in its opposite, death. It was your bravery and compassion that saved me._

"But…"

_Stop being such a scrawn and admit that you're a hero,_ he croons happily, getting off me and resting his snout on my stomach instead (which, technically, means that he's still on me. But he isn't licking me now, which is okay. But it would be okay if he licked me, too. He just needs to control that fish smell of his).

"I'm not a hero," I mutter quietly, wrapping my hands around his snout gently. He lets out a small sigh and rolls his eyes.

_To me, you are,_ he croons, closing his eyes and purring happily. He's asleep in no time.

I watch him there silently, my hands loosely hugging that overgrown snout of his. As he rests, he does not seem to mind the fact that he's 1. sleeping on me, and 2. preventing me from moving anywhere. A little bit of me wants to care, but because of what he said, I don't really think that it will matter. As long as he's alright, I'm inclined to do anything at the moment. I feel like anything's possible at the moment, just with me and him by my side. Everything else, Stoick, the village, even Astrid, will have to come later.

Right now, we're just two playful boys, and we want a rest.

Maybe people should understand that more often.

I watch as a little leaf settles itself onto Toothless's back. It rises and falls every time Toothless breathes in and out, and its gentle movements remind me of what we are. Toothless is the ear, and I'm the leaf. I rise whenever he rises, and if he falls, it's guaranteed that I fall as well. He's the base that I rely on. Without him, I am easily swept away by the slightest of winds.

Which is ironic, because the left just fluttered over and landed on me instead. Maybe Toothless is like the as well, and he too relies on me as a foundation.

I think of the scripts and books that I read ever so often, and how they all contain scenes about great men fighting dangerous battles and making history through their bravery and sacrifices. I think of the people who read these scripts, and think of how great these people are, and how these people made history by not standing still or letting the time pass them by.

And I think of myself. I think of how people see these little moments in time, of me and Toothless, just lying on the ground together, letting the leaves fall onto us and letting the wind blow past us by, and how insignificant it will be to history. People will look back at us and think how we wasted time, and how we should have been doing more important things.

But to me, this is the most important part of my life. To just lie down with Toothless, forget about everything there ever was in this world, letting the time pass us by, and knowing that in every moment of our lives we will have each other there for us. It is the most valuable thing in the world, friendship, and not a thousand wives will ever suffice the platonic love that a friend can ever give.

History can be made whenever you want it to. Mutual happiness cannot.

I think of the time that I fought the Red Death with Toothless, how our courage and bravery made change to the world, how we were hailed as heroes, how Astrid finally liked me, and I think of the time right now, our little moment in history, where we're just resting, doing nothing, marvelling at how wonderful this world is.

And I think that I'm never going to trade anything for it.

Because nothing, nothing, matters more than our happiness.

Not even my life.

**T**

After a while, I hear a small snore from Hiccup, causing my mind to rise from its small slumber. Short, it may have been, but I've never slept deeper since. It's like when you wake up, and you know that nothing can go wrong, because everything that is perfect is already hugging you, and you are hugging all that is perfect, never letting them go.

Well, I wonder though, if he has time to go get some fish. I'm sort of hungry.

Speaking of hunger… the inner part of my teeth… it feels sticky. Did I have fish earlier?

Could it be…

I lick it experimentally, and recoil suddenly as I taste blood. _Fresh blood._

I recall the blood on the grass.

Okay, calm down… I think to myself in panic. /Did Hiccup… no, he wouldn't…

"Toothless..."

My ears perk up at the sound, and see Hiccup's hands fidgeting around restlessly.

_What is it?_ I ask. He doesn't do anything apart from shift his head into a more comfortable position.

When he goes back to sleeping as normal, I let out a small huff of disconcern. Humans are weird. It's only my luck that I know a friend who is both weird and caring.

But still… did he give me that blood? Was it his blood that gave me the strength to regenerate?

"Toothless..." Hiccup begins to flex his arms, sweat appearing on his forehead.

_Hey, are you okay?_ I ask, but after a while he falls asleep again. My eyes don't leave him this time, slitting and wondering if I could access his thoughts. But I know that it would be futile to try, and I would be invading his private space anyway.

Friends are honest to each other, but they also have their dark secrets that are best left alone.

Or was this my own blood...

"Toothless…!" Hiccup yells, thrashing around violently, his hands hitting the ground and my snout in panic, fear- even anger.

_Hiccup!_ I say, nudging him hard enough for him to jolt awake, beads of sweat running down his neck.

"I had a dream..." he pants. "I dreamed… I fell when I was hugging you, and the blood seeped out of my shoulder, and…"

_Entered my mouth,_ I say slowly, piecing everything together the same time Hiccup does.

"Yes. You saw that too?"

_I- I…_ I begin. I was the one who caused Hiccup's nightmares…

"It's alright, Toothless," he pants with a small smile, looking up into the morning sky. "I'm alright."

I look at his smile, and I cannot bring myself to trouble him any longer. Maybe there _are_ things that we must keep away until the time is right.

But not with those closest to us.

As I explain it to him, he only answers with nods and 'mm's of understanding. When I'm done, he gives me this weird smile and hugs me tightly.

"All the more reason for you to be happy," he says happily. "So I can be happy too."

And that's when I realize: happiness does not come from ourselves. It comes from seeing those we care about being happy.

Empathy is the greatest trait we sentimental beings have.

**T**

I wash myself happily in the cove. The water does not soak my skin like it would for humans, but the water is just as liberating nonetheless. Which is a fitting theme for the birds that can fly out into their future, without care of where they come from or where they will end up.

It's the thrill of adventure that keeps them going along.

I snag a fish from the water and eat it happily, hoping to wash the taste of blood out. I still think it's Hiccup's blood, but a small nudge tells me that it could have been anyone's, including mine. I don't know. All I know is that Hiccup saved my life, and because of that, I've been given another chance of living.

"Hiccup!" a voice yells, somersaulting down onto the ground near me. I turn around warily and find Astrid kissing Hiccup full on the face. Hiccup freezes, his hands unsure of what to do (or he maybe have forgotten that they even existed, but whatever). She doesn't stop kissing, either, when I stand right next to them and give them a happy croon, as if saying,

'_Astrid, do you take Hiccup to be your lawfully wedded wife?_'

(Yes, the wife joke part was intended.)

And then, when Astrid pulls away,

'_I declare you… mates for life._'

Obviously, Hiccup must have gotten a glimpse of what I said (I wonder if I even said that out loud!), because when Astrid pulled away, he gave me the hardest stare I've ever seen.

And I laugh.

And Astrid laughs.

And then he laughs, and suddenly Astrid is hugging me too, and thanking me for helping him get himself back together, and I'm wondering what she means until Hiccup gives me a guilty (but smiling) look.

Maybe some things should be held out until the time is right.

But not with Hiccup, who will tolerate pretty much anything that happens between us.

"I've been… in depression the last month that you weren't here," he mutters, rubbing my snout gently as Astrid pulls away. (I don't think she's hot at all.) "Let's just say I stopped being myself and I rarely spoke to anyone."

"He didn't even speak to _me,_" Astrid huffs. "You two must be real close for Hiccup to have felt so down." She turns to Hiccup. "If _I_ were gone, would _you_ be like this?"

"Maybe if you didn't punch me so much-" he mumbles, which earns him a really, really, forceful punch from Astrid. They begin to argue, and bicker. Strangely enough, I let the couple be as I watch another figure stagger to the cliffs.

_Stormfly!_ I can out, watching her physique as she looks down at the cove quietly.

_I've been worried about you,_ she says quietly, ruffling her wings in a solemn manner.

_You have? _I ask, taken aback by her words.

_Duh,_ she mumbles nervously. _When Astrid told me that you two might not make it, I tried to turn back right away… but I had faith in you. You're a strong one, Toothless._

_Yeah…_ I say, not really sure of what to make of her words. _You are, too. You got Astrid back safely and everything._

_I wish I could have helped you,_ she says quickly. _I've never felt this useless before._

_You're not useless,_ I tell her. _You're one of the fastest fliers out there. You're a really good friend of mine._

For some reason, she seems to droop her wings even more.

_Hey, I was wondering, if you're free… could you meet me near Astrid's house? I- uh, the other dragons, want to know the whole story._

_I think I'm going to stay with Hiccup,_ I say. _But sure, I'll go see you after I'm done flying with him._

_Alright…_ she says, her tone lightening almost like she's jubilant. _Thank you… Toothless._

_Um... thanks? _I answer. Thank me for what?

As she turns around and flies away (I suppose Astrid ran here and didn't see Stormfly), and I croon in question.

I wonder why she's telling me all this. And the way she fluttered when I agreed to talk to the other dragons. She's acting strange. She's usually never that open to me before…

**C**

Idiot.

The whole world would know that the Nadder likes him, and he doesn't.

How. Just how.

I could roll my eyes for eternity, point out signs that everyone would know of, and yet… he's just so blind to all of this. I could write it in front of him, in the sand, NADDER LIKES NIGHT FURY- and he wouldn't get it. He'd ask who was named Nadder. And what a strange name Night Fury was.

He's still clueless, after all this time… oh, I could laugh.

It was so obvious.

Hikari liked Night Fury as well. I heard her ponder at nights that Night Fury was out. I've never talked to her, but it was so obvious. They were just too shy for each other to speak. They could have been together. I could have given them so many opportunities to meet… it would have taken only one to set them off. But I never did help them. I thought I was doing the right thing, keeping them away and letting them meet on their own circumstances.

And now it's too late.

And after all this time, he's still clueless… it's almost funny, the way the handsome boys are the most oblivious to the girls that like them.

After all this time.

_Pa? Is there something wrong?_

I turn to my youngest son, the son who I found surviving in the woods not far from here. It turns out he was sneaking out for fun the night Night Fury was shot down, and he's been there since. I feel bad for forgetting him, but now…

_Pa?_

I give him a gentle lick.

_It's nothing, champ,_ I say, rubbing my snout against his. _Let's go._

I turn tail, facing away from the treetops and taking off into the sky quietly.

_Good luck, my friend,_ I echo in my thoughts.

Sometimes, you've got to be that friend that sacrifices your own interests so someone else can be happy. Sometimes, you just have to accept it when someone forgets about you and finds someone else better than you. Sometimes, you just have to be that invisible giver that disappears when the heads are turned your way.

Besides, I am happy myself. Soon, Night Fury, Toothless, Hitori, will become another memory that will soon become a story for me to tell my son. How we fought the wrongs and upheld the rights. Maybe, just maybe, when the time comes, we may cross paths again. And only then will I smile and greet him, as an old friend, and talk about what memories we made.

Hopefully, though, the scars that run on the devil's skin will be enough of a mark to make him remember to never mess with my friends again.

**H**

It's pretty much noon when we finally decide to go back to Berk.

It turns out, Stormfly came running after Astrid the second she noticed that the latter was missing- Astrid's off on Stormfly now, and for some reason Stormfly is flying really fast and avoiding eye contact with me. Me? I dunno. But she's definitely not looking this way.

I swore I saw the speck of red again too, but I'm too delighted to care, really. Toothless is going back to Berk, and everything's going to become normal again.

Well, hopefully. I mean, there's still the father problem.

"Toothless…" I ask.

_Mm?_ he asks, flapping his wings gently as the sun blazes down on us.

"If you meet my father…"

_I thought he was dead,_ he says bluntly.

"_Toothless!_" I say, a hint of anger in my voice. "He's my father!"

_He tried to kill me,_ Toothless growls. _So, he's still alive?_

"He was trying to protect me," I say. "Like I was trying to protect you."

_He tried to kill me,_ Toothless repeats.

"Toothless-" I begin, my anger rising gradually. How can Toothless be so blunt about this thing? He should know better! He's been through more death than me. He knows what it's like to lose someone you care about, even if you detest them.

_I'm not mad at him,_ he says, shaking his head with a sigh. _I just don't think that I want to see him again. If he tries to kill me again-_

"Then I will not hesitate to be by your side," I cut in. "But, for now, don't hurt him. He's been through a lot."

_For now,_ Toothless croons.

"For a while, then," I say, knowing how good Toothless can be with words.

_How long?_

"Umm..."

_Just kidding,_ he warbles. _If he doesn't hurt you, I'm fine._

I look down at him, and he answers by wiggling those ears of his. You know, pushing them up and down, like he was a flashing sign. I find it quite… funny, really.

"You're cool, you know that?" I ask, grabbing one of his ears gently and nuzzling against it.

_Grrpphmmmr,_ Toothless mumbles, a mixture of discomfort and happiness. Imagine getting your ear nuzzled.

"And you're just soooooooooo cuddleable," I say, reaching down to hug him.

_Sometimes I wonder if the other people think you like me or not,_ he says with a sigh. _You show way too much affection._

"What do you want me to do, cry that you're still alive?" Hiccup asks, rubbing my sides happily.

I purr happily in content. _C'mon, a bit more to the right…_

"Being best friends makes other people question the way your axe swings," Hiccup jokes.

_Yeah, yeah- mm! Yeah, rub my neck!_ I say, almost forgetting that I'm still flying.

Yep. Being with Hiccup makes you forget you're there.

And it's good.

**H**

We land on Berk amid the sounds of joy, mainly from the teens and Gobber, but still, joy. Setting down deftly in front of the house, the twins immediately start hitting each other, causing everyone to look their way. Snotlout tries to use the confusion to kiss Astrid, but gets punched straight in the face (sucker!), Gobber heads over to try to break up the ensuing fights, and I manage to pass them by easily. To be honest, I just want to clear up the remaining loose ends. And get a few z's.

"So, having a better time?" Fishlegs says, who walks up to meet me. Evidently, he was inside the house and just decided to come out. Evidently, 'better time' seems to be a better word than 'good' time, because it really is a better time.

"Couldn't be better," I say, patting Toothless absentmindedly. "Where's dad?"

"He's in the house," he says, pointing his thumb behind him.

"Thanks," I say, walking past him, Toothless close by. As I near the door, he grabs my arm.

"Hiccup," he whispers seriously. "Whatever you do- don't let Toothless hurt him, alright? You need to prove that Toothless isn't-"

I nod with finality, shaking his arm off me.

"I know what I'm doing," I say. "Well, I hope so."

I open the door quietly, Toothless poking his head through and slipping inside. I smile slightly and head inside as well.

I don't find my father far away- he's sitting on the couch, his hands and legs heavily bandaged, his breathing quiet but rough, his head hanging down from what I can only assume to be defeat.

It's a tense, tense, moment when I walk up to him slowly. He probably knows it's me, but honestly- it feels like neither of us knew each other anymore. It's like talking to someone who you had a grudge against, and it certainly was anything but talking to your father. Usually, at this age, it's pretty uncomfortable to talk to your guardians anyway- but as of now, I really don't think I know the man standing in front of me at all.

It's all I can do, too, to stop Toothless, who is not far away, from growling. I know he's my friend. I know that we've been together for so long. I know we went through hell and heaven alike together.

But the man I am going to talk to now is my father.

And so I speak first.

"Dad," I say. I did not expect an answer, but he looks up anyway. I can see the wound under his chest now; a large, patched up, but greenish wound.

"Son," he says, looking at me with exhausted eyes. Like he's tired of battle and all that it has done to him. "What is it?"

"I… I…" I begin. Honestly, I don't know what to say. I just know that I have to talk to him, because he's gone through a lot, maybe even worse than me, but I just don't know what to say to make things right again.

"I was stupid," he starts. "I was into my own head for too long. I thought… I could make things better again."

"Don't say that, dad," I say. I hate it when people talk less of themselves. Especially when they shouldn't.

"Hiccup, I don't want you to be angry, but…" he heaves a sigh. "Do you know why you have no mother?"

Mom?

"Why?" I ask curiously.

"A Night Fury shot her. Clean impact. We couldn't do anything about it..."

Toothless's eyes widen, and quickly turn toward me in alert.

I know now, why people are told to be silent when they're prosecuted; anything that you say will hurt your credibility. People will think you're desperate and thus actually guilty.

And, as of now, I don't even want to know if he is or not.

"No…" I stutter. "Toothless… wouldn't…"

"I'm not saying it was Toothless," he says quietly. "I'm just saying that a Night Fury did it."

"Then..." I try hard not to process my thoughts, but they just keep coming. I thought that Toothless was the only Night Fury left alive…? Then who…?

"I found out, on a raid several months ago, that there were more Night Furies," he explains. "I thought that it was running the nest. I thought that it was the devil..."

Toothless's ears fall back instantly, and this time he growls.

"I ordered them to raid," he says sadly. "But all there was, a defenseless Night Fury, one who fought for their wounded, to the very end… and all I did was watch."

Toothless snarls angrily, blasting the ground next to Stoick in anger.

"T- Toothless…" I begin, but I feel the hate in me rising as well. He killed… a Night Fury?

"Your dragon has every right to hate me," he says with a sigh. "I hated him as well."

Toothless growls angrily. I have to move between him and Stoick to prevent any fights from occurring.

_Let me get him… just a bite…_ he roars angrily, trying to break find a spot that he can attack from. _He killed her. He killed her!_

Honestly, I am tempted to help him too, even if I don't know who 'she' is. But something tells me that violence, history making as it is, is not the answer.

"Still, I was intent… I wanted more revenge," he continues, trying his best to ignore the threat beyond me. "And when you trained a Night Fury… it boiled my blood. I could never really look at your dragon in the eye. Had it been a Nadder, I would have at least passed it off…"

"Toothless and I were meant to meet," I say angrily. "No one can change that."

"After the dragons made peace… I was furious. I wanted them to pay the price of slaying one that I loved most."

He looks at me straight in the eye.

"I could never tell you the news. It would kill us all, if I told you that a Night Fury killed your mother. You would have angered him and he would have killed you. It would lead to another war."

"Toothless would never try to kill me," I say defiantly. "Not from spite."

"So, I set to try and make things right. I got a dragon of my own. I thought that dragons maybe were okay. You certainly convinced me of that, despite the hate that I still harbored for your dragon."

"He's not my dragon-"

"I know, I know," he says tiredly. "Listen."

And for once, I listen to his orders.

"When he wasn't with you these past few days, you fell into an almost unresponsive depression," he says. "Everyone came to talk to me. And they told the same story: Toothless was gone, and you were so sad you couldn't do anything. You didn't even eat. All you said was that Toothless was going to come back. You kept muttering it, over and over again. And then you'd fall silent and you'd be really aggressive towards everyone who went up to you."

I look guiltily at Toothless, who stops snarling and looks at me with wide eyes instead.

_You… went through all that?_ he asks, which I find too painful to answer. I urge my father to continue.

"And I thought: Dragons were dragons, no matter how close you got to them. I thought Toothless had left Hiccup of his own accord, and I was happy… until I saw you in that state."

_Hiccup?_ he says, nudging me with his snout gently. _Did you really…_

"It made me angry. And when your dragon returned, I made it a resolution to kill him. He had to die. I had had enough. I wouldn't let another Night Fury kill my son as well."

"Dad..."

"So, instead of doing what was right, I ended up nearly killing my son. And you proved to me that we are all animals of this world, and it can be impossible for us to hold grudges together." he says sadly, nodding towards the shoulder of mine. "Is it feeling better now?"

"I guess so," I mumble, absentmindedly trying to pry Toothless off as he continually nudges my side, completely oblivious to Stoick's words.

_Really, Hiccup?_ he keeps asking. _You really did? You didn't even eat because of me? Hiccup?_

"I suppose you have something to tell me," he says, looking at me with the expression of a father. Cold, but caring.

"Dad..."

_Did you really? C'mon, Hiccup, I'm concerned here. Did you?_

"Yes, I did, Toothless," I sigh. "Can you stop for a while?"

_But… are you okay now?_ he asks, a small whimper escaping him. I pat his head gently.

"_Yes,_" I say irritably.

_Will I have to make you super happy to make up for-_

"Toothless."

_GrrmmpharI'mtakingthatasayesmaybeI'llgetyousomefis horsomethinglaterblarrrmmph_, he mumbles all very fast.

"Well… dad," I say, turning towards him. Honestly… what is there left to say? He said everything. He wanted to protect me, but his anger got into the way.

So…

"Are you okay?" I ask.

My dad gives me a surprised look.

"What?"

"I asked if you were okay," I repeat. "Those scars look like they hurt."

"Not as much for a viking," he says gruffly. "Though trust me, green venom cuts through skin."

_Changewing..._ I hear Toothless mutter. _Guy was famous for his poison._

I wish I knew who Changewing was. Or maybe I'm happy that I'm not.

"So… Toothless?" I ask, turning towards his perked up ears. "Is there anything you want to tell my father?"

Toothless's ears instantly lay down flat, his smile becomes a sneer.

_Tell him this, and don't miss out on a single word:_ he begins. _He's the worst person in the world and deserves to be sent to the pits of the Queen's nest, because he took away everything from me._

I repeat these words to my father uncomfortably, who only nods with acceptance.

_But I want to thank him, too,_ Toothless continues grudgingly. _Because he managed to destroy my past so completely, the only thing I have left is the present time, which I share with Hiccup. And if he ever tried to take you away from me, he's going to know the same agony that I did._

I repeat that as well. As if it is a miracle, my father smiles.

"I'm glad that you're alright," he says to Toothless."

Toothless snarls and bares his teeth at him, but doesn't do anything else otherwise.

"Then… I'll be, uh, going," I say, making to leave, fearing that their conversation may escalate.

"To where?" my father asks.

I turn around and look at his face. Maybe he isn't the cold man I thought he was...

I look at Toothless, and as soon as our eyes lock, so do our intentions.

"The present," I tell Stoick, rubbing Toothless's snout happily as he races me out of the door.

**T**

_Wanna try a new trick?_ I ask, dashing through the air in a noble fashion, my wings spreading out and depreciating the sun's light as it shines down onto the wide, wide sea that surrounds the world. I've been to so many places before, and in none of them have I found happiness as strong as here.

No, I don't mean the sea.

Then, where? I may ask myself. Where? Hiccup may ask. Where? The sea itself may ask.

And to that, I answer: Anywhere. Be it the colourful rainforests, the freezing north, or even at home, by a wooden bed; as long as there is Hiccup on my back, I am happy.

"Bring it on," Hiccup says with a grin.

I roar, diving downwards with tremendous speed. I relay a series of firebolts into the water. Instantly, massive pillars of liquid water splash around me, a grand water fountain spouting as I breathe fire around the water as it rises all around us, causing steam to rise around everywhere.

"Whoa," he says in awe, reaching out his hands slowly as the water evaporates into steam and back into liquid. "This is..."

_Not done yet,_ I say, flying out of the fountain and turning tail right back in. Where there was steam just moments ago, lies a small rainbow, stretching from where the blasts of water once shook the water and rattled the skies enough for it to burst out its wonderful colours.

"A rainbow..." he whispers. I slow down, gliding slowly into the the spectrum of colours.

His hand reaches out to teach the vivid colors of the world, his fingers flying through them as I glide from one end of the rainbow to the other, his hands never ever leaving the majestic wonders of the land, the marvels of the sea.

I reach the end of the fiery coolness, dashing straight towards a solid rock, its elevated cliff making the structure perfect for resting on. In fact, this rock, this island… was the first place that Hiccup and I ever reached by air, when we had our first test flight, when our friendship was finally proven for eternum.

"Toothless… that was magnificent," Hiccup says, getting off me and hugging me gently. I purr, pulling away and giving him a happy look.

_I knew that would make you really happy,_ I croon joyfully, running around enthusiastically. _I wanted to make sure that your sadness never came again. And right then, you looked just like that!_ I coo happily. _You were sooooo free, even I don't think I could compare how I felt._

"And what exactly do you feel?" he asks, settling down on the rock and laughing.

_I feel… liberated,_ I say, closing my eyes and running in circles. _I feel like… infinite. I feel… mm, dizzy._

"You better calm down," Hiccup chuckles. "Or you might do yourself in before we get back."

_Alright, alright,_ I say dazedly, coming to rest on the cliff's edge, watching the sun as it once again makes its way down. We've been flying for so long, nonstop, neverending. Tricks I never knew existed, feelings I never thought I'd feel again, all rediscovered from the moment Hiccup took with me to the skies. I never knew how it feels like to be at the happiest part of your life.

And I may never know. Because it just gets better and better every day, every minute, in a neverending rush of adventures, feelings, and wonder.

We're infinite.

"Toothless," Hiccup calls from behind me. I turn around, looking at him as he gives me one of those first looks of trust. Of when we knew our lives would never be the same.

_Yeah?_ I ask, walking up to him and resting by his side.

"Your tailfins..."

He points to my tailfins, both of them now intact and alive.

_Yeah?_ I ask.

"They're… whole," he says.

_I know,_ I nod. What does he mean?

"That means… you don't need me to fly," he says. "You could just be anywhere, and-"

I nudge him irritatedly, growling at his words, stopping him midsentence.

_Hiccup, after all this time, do you think I'm going to go wherever I like, even with a whole tailfin?_

"I'm just saying you could," he mutters, rubbing my side absentmindedly. "You could travel the world, see new things, just do anything you want."

_I've been everywhere, and done everything I can think of,_ I say. _And it's been scientifically proven that there's no place I want to be other than next to you, and nothing else to do than being by your side._

A long silence passes through us as Hiccup pulls me in for a hug. A long, silent, and meaningful embrace.

**H**

"Thank you," I mumble, trying hard to hold back the tears that are coming once again. But they are tears that symbolize happiness, victory, liberation. They are more than just liquid flowing out of my eyes. They show the love I have for this dragon, overflowing out through every part of my body as I hug him, never wanting to move away.

_Thank_ **you**, he warbles. _For giving me life._

"Hmph," I say, blinking back tears as I scratch him happily. "Some special dragon out there is going to be really lucky to be mates with you."

_Mates?_ Toothless asks, tilting his head in confusion. _Who needs mates?_

I stare at him.

"What?"

_I mean, after all you've been through with me, you little friend, do you really think I would be happier with a mate? With a partner that will never be more loyal than a friend?_

"Do you mean..." I ask, my hands freezing as I try to process his words.

_Yup,_ he says, lowering his snout so it's touching my back as I hug him. _I'm not going to have a mate._

I pull away from him, eyes staring in shock.

"Toothless!" I snap, clapping my hands in front of him loudly in case he might have lost a few senses of his. "Do you know what you're saying?"

_Of course,_ he warbles. _I don't want a mate. I'm perfectly happy being a friend of yours._

"But- children- the Night Fury population-" I stammer.

_Oh, the world can carry on without me,_ he coos. _I told you, if I'm not going to be happier with someone else, why should I leave you?_

"T-Toothless..." I say, tears finally flowing from my eyes, as I fall forward, unable to contain the kindness and sacrifice that he's giving me.

And he's there to catch me as I fall.

I hug his neck tightly, making sure that my hands never let go. I want to let history know, that history, as powerful and intriguing as it is, is only history. I want to let history know that history, as powerful and intriguing as it is, is only history. It is the past, and we can never go back to fix it. We can only carry on with our lives, and with our lives is what history will be made of. It is our future that will make up our past.

And Toothless is giving up his future, everything; just for me.

And as I hug him, with my tears flowing down my eyes, his warmth encompassing me like a warm breeze, I am assured that when my tears stop, there will be a certain friend who will be still be in my arms, ready to lick those tears away, and make me forget about the past scars that life has inflicted.

And for him, everything that I have, anything that he needs, I will give.

Warmth, care, trust, love, even life. Anything.

I'll give anything.

For Toothless.

* * *

**It's done, folks! Anything for Life is officially completed!**

**A/N: So, first of all,I'd like to thank LesserWraith for allowing me to have a part in this story, and for reading and betaing every chapter. I am eternally grateful, because without you none of this would have happened. I was really surprised that anybody was actually willing to let me collaborate on their story, since my first few chapters of my first fic (Dragon School) were decidedly amateurish, and not really a true representation of my abilities. I'm disappointed that Anything for Life is ending, but it's been an awesome journey for me. I first read Anything for Life over two months ago now, and within a week of getting Fanfiction and posting my first story, I was collaborating with someone. It was a combination of incredible luck and some confidence from me that got me here, and I'm so glad I found the courage to ask about a collaboration that day, because it's just been awesome. Just awesome. **

**I'd also like to give a massive thank you to all the readers and reviewers, because without all your positivity I would never have trusted my own abilities. It's been an incredible journey, and I feel honoured to have been a part of it. **

**L/N: When I first wrote Anything for Life, I honestly did not think that the story would become a collaboration- or a story at all. At first, it was only an idea that kept me up at night, and soon it became a oneshot that was posted here. It was Absi B who came along and offered to help me continue the story- no one has ever asked me that before. We both had our different ideas of how the story would turn out, and because of that we both kept turning the story into unexpected turns, which made writing incredibly fun. I really want to thank her for everything she's done, and frankly, I don't know if she knows how much of an impact she's had on me.**

**I want to thank you guys, too. You guys make me realize that my stories truly are worth reading. I want to give all of you guys a biiig hug, especially those who have been with me continuously. You guys are awesome, and I don't say that to people without meaning it. **

**If you fear that the adventures of Hiccup and Toothless/LesserWraith and Absi B end just here, fear not, for the story Fallen Guardian, which is on Absi B's profile, is yet another collaboration that we have been working on. We'll try to make it even better than Anything for Life!**

**I shall see you all soon. Stay awesome! :)**


End file.
